> Many suicides are prompted by trivial or very temporary situations that are not at fault.

I am part of a support group that is dominated by people who've attempted suicide.

The words trivial and temporary don't describe any part of their journey.

What is common, is how these people were harmed by the self-interested and misguided actions of others.

That presumed that the whole trial wasn’t the cause of the mental issues. I’m sure that facing an immoral DOJ out for blood caused him a lot of stress and depression (or triggered any latent issues).

It's rather well documented that Aaron had been thinking about suicide long before getting mixed up with the DOJ http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/341150

Did you actually read that link? He wrote the alleged “suicide note” in a moment where he was suffering from extreme physical pain as that was his way of expressing it to give himself some mental release. On top of all of that he was dealing with getting fired which itself can be a mindfuck.

To me the proximate cause 100% was the legal case against him - it inflamed any underlying issues and they just kept pressing. I could be wrong of course but I don’t think anyone will ever truly know what was happening in his head.

I did read that link. People without mental issues don't tend to post suicide notes, regardless of whatever physical pain or employment issues they might be facing.

It's fairly clear that Swartz had a history of suicidal ideation, this wasn't of the DoJs making no matter how unfairly they may have treated him.

>To me the proximate cause 100% was the legal case against him - it inflamed any underlying issues and they just kept pressing. I could be wrong of course but I don’t think anyone will ever truly know what was happening in his head.

Obviously the cause was his preexisting mental issues, a healthy individual would not kill themselves in his situation.

Suicidal ideation is regular & there's a very clear step jump function in how its treated by psychotherapists vs a genuine intent to commit suicide. Until you make concrete plans to harm yourself or others, ideation is just that. Most people keep it private but I don't believe there's any literature that indicates that voicing that ideation publicly somehow makes you more likely to actually enact it.

You're arguing that DoJ didn't create the opportunity for Aaron to kill himself, they merely seized upon it and got an even stronger outcome than they were hoping for.

It's not clear how that addresses DoJ's highly unethical choice to stack 52 years of federal prison time.