[ Outline ] · Standard · Linear+ So I Go To My Psych Class Today Since Missing Last

[diane26]

week the class is on Tuesdays and Thursday nights and I find out my teacher is MISSING.

The last time he was seen was on the last day of March.... Since I missed last week I had no idea but apparently there was no class cause he has just dissapered. this is like the third OC teacher to go missing in the past year.

THey just posted it on the News site today.


Here is the link

http://kitsapsun.com/bsun/local/article/0,...4613530,00.html


I am in shock I have never known anyone on a personal level that has gone missing.

[jlynn]

And suicide...wow. I'll skip all my psych-major mumbo jumbo and just go off of personal experience.

I was 12 when my grandfather committed suicide. I knew what had happpend, and why it had happened, and at the time, I wasn't angry, nor did I feel it was selfish. As time went on, though, my feelings changed. I'm still more hurt than anything, and I don't usually feel angry, but I struggle with whether or not it's selfish. At the core of the issue, I don't see why a person wouldn't have the right to do it, it's their own life. But as so many others have said, when you have a family, you have to really consider the effect it will have. I can't help but feel upset that my grandfather wasn't there to see me graduate in the top of my class, that he wasn't there to witness the birth of my brother's first son, his first great grandchild. Maybe that's selfish, but it makes a family feel DAMN inadequate that they weren't worth living for. I've seen the way it can ruin a family, as it did to my mother's side, and I guess maybe that's part of the reason I'm determined to become a psychologist.

Ultimately, we should not be here to pass judgement on these people, but rather to offer help to them, to let them know that there's always hope. Once you hit bottom, there's nowhere to go but up.

It makes me think of that Bright Eyes song, "No Lies, Just Love." I have to cry when I hear it, it has a deep emotional attachment for me.

For some reason, I don't think anything I just tried to say came out right.

[Isaac_Putin]

Suicide is committed for a variety of reasons, but a lot of psychologists now consider it a hostile, selfish act -- at least where the person isn't incredibly mentally incapacitated (or dying of a terminal disease) when they do it:

For example, if I committed suicide:

1. I would leave two tiny kids who never got a chance to know me. And would wonder about me the rest of their lives. They would also wonder what was lacking in them that I would consider leaving them behind.

2. I wouldn't be able to support my family, and (I believe) most life insurance policies don't pay out on suicide as cause of death.

3. My wife would wonder for the rest of her life what it was that I wasn't telling her, what clues she should have recognized, etc. to detect that I was about to do something. And then that would be combined with bitter resentment for leaving her and the family in such a messed up situation.

4. My other various family members would be devastated. It would probably finish off my mother.

Without being egotistical, it would blow a huge hole in the lives of people close to me. And it would be a wound that could never be completely healed over.

[somfan]

Diane -
I'm a little slow to react here, but take some interest in your story for several reasons, as you know.

And we may as well discuss it in this normally cheery venue.

Suicide is very perplexing and touches many people, obviously. Having known people who have committed suicide, I share your grief.

Suicide can be something deeply personal but also can be a very social act, even a hostile act as Isaac Putin suggests. Indeed what is acknowledged as the first real sociological work was Emile Durkheim's classic sociological study "Suicide."

At least some people are blaming OC for conditions leading to the 3 suicides committted by full-time middle-aged instructors there. I find this blog on the web, which I would nonetheless take a critical look at:

http://blogs.kitsapsun.com/kitsap/bremerto..._bremerton.html
- Somfan