Please do not toss The Suicide Ball hither & yon ... not in the coronavirus threads or, for that matter, anywhere else in your life.

People who have lost a loved one to suicide know that it is difficult (and kinda pointless) to ascribe a suicide to a cause; it is rather like knitting, where you finish by sticking the needles thru the ball of remaining yarn this way, or that way, or in some other way but, in the end, all you've got is some needles stuck thru a ball of yarn.

Consider "mental illness":

- some folks take their life because they fear being hospitalized (again), while

- some folks take their life because they fear the ever-worsening side-effects of their medication, while

- some folks take their life because they fear being a burden to their loved ones (which, in fact, they can be, welcome or not), while

- some folks take their life because they are in the grip of an ugly episode.

The problem, of course, is that any suicide ascribed to "mental illness" often includes all of these elements.

Now, consider "coronavirus":

- some folks might take their life because they lose their job due to a government-mandated shutdown, while

- some folks might take their life because they see a virus running rampant all around them, while

- some folks might take their life because they lose their job due to a fall in aggregate demand due to the epidemic itself, while

- some folks might take their life because they see an ineffective response to a public health crisis, and lose all hope that there will ever be an effective response to the public health crisis ruining their life.

We should leave suicide out of these discussions precisely because every individual suicide is individual, and complex, and occurs in a moment that is largely unrecoverable.

Cheers,

/s/ ikeyPikey