The Semantics of Suicide

For some, it's become inappropriate to use the term "commit suicide." The reasoning behind this is that the word "commit" implies a crime or a moral wrong - i.e. committing adultery, committing murder. Of course, emotional and psychiatric duress should never be classified as something morally reprehensible. So, alternate terms are suggested: "died by suicide," or the somewhat and confusing morbid "completed suicide."

Being a career mental patient, under consistent psychiatric care since I was 14 (I'm now 35), and having attempted to take my own life at least once in the past, I feel I have an authority to speak on the subject, and the right to give advice to anyone else who's struggled with such things:

If you ever confide in someone about your personal experience, and they correct or rebuke you for using the term "commit suicide," should you choose to phrase it that way, you have every right to tell that person to bugger off. To go fly a kite, to suck an egg, to die mad about it. Anyway you choose to phrase it: this is your story, your experience, your struggle. You are under no obligation to adhere to the vocabulary of anyone's else's ideology. 

There's enough anxiety in life as it is, for both mentally healthy and unhealthy people, without adding to it by walking on eggshells to placate others. Don't go out of your way to offend people - but if mental health matters, as we say every May, be good to yourself and don't allow others to burden you with more tension than what's already necessary in daily life.

Sincerely,

a chronic mental patient