Suicide

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Suicide

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So this morning my older brother got into an arguement with my younger brother. When they finished My older brother left to go to school and I went to finish preparing for my school day. I then heard my younger brother crying and I Heard him say to himself " I feel like killing myself." I immediately asked him about it and he said that I had heard him incorrectly. I did not believe him, so I called my mother and she came to get him. It turns out he is stressed out with school, he frequently procrastinates on the assignments that he considers boring, but he doesn't want to procrastinate, but he can't help himself. His suicidal thoughts appear to not be caused by arguing with our brother, but more upon school work and not measuring up to everyone else. So my mother took him to the school that she works at to complete any assignments that he is behind on. Why do you think that anyone would want to kill themself over school? He is not bullied in the slightest, but falling a little bit behind in classes is giving him these emotions. I would like to think that the second he turns the assignments in he will be fine, but I'm not sure, any thoughts?
Last edited by Insert name here on Thu Apr 30, 2015 10:50 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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miniboes
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Re: Suicide

Post by miniboes »

Are you sure he is not being bullied? he might just not want to tell you about it.

Anyway, I had a lot of trouble with school over the years for two reasons: I often got bullied until 3 years ago and I have always found school very boring. Most assignments you receive are (perceived as) completely useless. Having to spend a lot of time on useless things is frustrating as hell. At a certain point it stops being frustrating and it just starts being depressing. Then, you might not do it but constantly have the feeling that you should be doing it, and that is even more depressing. Homework is not exactly the most humane way of treating kids, as it is the same for however smart or dumb the student is.

I think your brother is suffering from demotivation in combination with fear of failure or perfectionism. These are very real issues that stem from the broken education system.I would advise looking for a way to reduce your brother's workload with the school. Perhaps ask the school if he can study and prepare for tests in his own way rather than making assignments.

I can elaborate more on this later, I currently don't have much time.
"I advocate infinite effort on behalf of very finite goals, for example correcting this guy's grammar."
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brimstoneSalad
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Re: Suicide

Post by brimstoneSalad »

It's possible. Miniboes' post on the subject was pretty good.

Keep in mind, though, that it may be more of a "last straw" kind of thing, and there may be other underlying reasons that are merely being projected onto the school work issue.
A large part of it, in some cases, it just chemical (although that rarely acts alone, it seems to sometimes).
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Re: Suicide

Post by Insert name here »

Thank you for your feedback, it seems as though he is feeling much better after having the entire day to work on his assignments. As it turns out he was being bullied by some of his classmates. Apparently this girl in his class is a complete asshole to him for no apparent reason, but he is currently working to solve that. I don't think we will see this problem again for awhile. Once again, thanks for your feedback.
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Re: Suicide

Post by Classic »

Insert name here wrote:Thank you for your feedback, it seems as though he is feeling much better after having the entire day to work on his assignments. As it turns out he was being bullied by some of his classmates. Apparently this girl in his class is a complete asshole to him for no apparent reason, but he is currently working to solve that. I don't think we will see this problem again for awhile. Once again, thanks for your feedback.
Glad you figured out what's going on.

I would have said that he may be similar to my psychology.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perfection ... chology%29

I have always had this idea, that if X is not perfect, then I should kill myself. This does not apply to everything in my life though. The urge of suicide gets very appealing, but here I am so far.
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brimstoneSalad
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Re: Suicide

Post by brimstoneSalad »

Classic wrote:but here I am so far.
I'm glad you are. And welcome, by the way!

Have you heard of the quantum suicide thought experiment?
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Classic
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Re: Suicide

Post by Classic »

brimstoneSalad wrote:
Classic wrote:but here I am so far.
I'm glad you are. And welcome, by the way!

Have you heard of the quantum suicide thought experiment?
Thanks! I am surprised I haven't joined earlier.

Never. I am reading Max Tegmark's article about it now:
http://space.mit.edu/home/tegmark/quant ... mmortality

This seems interesting, thank you.
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brimstoneSalad
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Re: Suicide

Post by brimstoneSalad »

Classic wrote: Never. I am reading Max Tegmark's article about it now:
http://space.mit.edu/home/tegmark/quant ... mmortality

This seems interesting, thank you.
The take home in this case would be the unnerving consequence.

That is, from everybody else's perspective, sure, you can commit suicide. But from your own, you can not.
Given that every suicide has some small chance of failure, and that distribution of probability is influenced -- as is everything -- by quantum mechanics at the quantum level and quickly magnified through chaos, the only outcome of suicide you will experience from your perspective is its horrible failure.

Which may be any number of horrendous and debilitating conditions that leave you conscious of your situation, paralyzed, in agony, etc.
Every attempt at taking your life, just leaving you in a more and more terrible state to suffer from.

It's actually quite disturbing to ponder.
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