Please don't recommend suicide. If you, OP or someone you know is struggling with suicidal thoughts, please call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255.

I'm not recommending suicide per se, but it's there if it's needed. Anyway, if you want your comment to be more applicable to an international audience, consider linking to findahelpline.com in addition to the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline.

Thanks for making the advice international.

Perhaps you can expand on when suicide is needed?

My answer will probably be unsatisfying to you: it's needed when you have enough confidence that all your other options are worse. That depends highly on individual circumstances and values, and not much more can be said in general.

But how can you ever have the confidence that your other options will continue to be worse over a longer time frame?

Almost by definition, if you are in the state of mind to consider suicide, you are probably not accurately and impartially weighing the question proposed — and that means it’s likely mostly independent of individual circumstances and values.

(This is different to how I felt when I was younger, and coming from someone who has had several people close to me feel that way at one point in their lives, and now living incredibly positive lives a few years after the fact)

I can see some limited circumstances where it is carefully and openly considered over a longer period of time — like a terminal illness, or unbearable and unsolvable chronic pain — but those cases are the minority by far.

> Almost by definition, if you are in the state of mind to consider suicide, you are probably not accurately and impartially weighing the question proposed

I just don't believe that. How did you arrive at that conclusion?

Such a US-centric take.

Or you can just get rich and emotionally self-sufficient enough to never depend on anyone. Although it's probably good to have end of life plan for when your body completely fails you because of old age.

Well, you need a fallback in case "just get rich" doesn't work out.

Where are you spending riches in order to get food, maintain your house and other property, connect with the news, deal with matters of state etc? On other people. Money won't make them go away.

Spending can be done with surprisingly little human contact these days.

Sure but there are still people on the other side and you're still participating in a society. Using your money to degrade that social fabric isn't a good long-term strategy.

I don't know that the thought itself is depressing, suicide is a fact of life and everyone with his mental faculties is well aware of it. We indeed don't "have to" do anything, but in reality we do; our brains are programmed to keep on living no matter what.