Intellectual Suicide

     Today, children, we are going to talk about suicide.  People commit suicide for a multitude of reasons, the major one possibly being the inability to cope with some stressor and the additional point of lack of support around them.  They figure that this inner-outer conflict is less preferable to death.  Then, depending on their belief system, they would have to cope with some after-life punishment.  This, if thought through, would imply that such never-ending punishment would be preferable to their current torment.  Some belief systems, if they can be called that, assume that there is a never-ending nothingness waiting to greet us on the other side.
     Suicide is the final action.  Nothing is more subjectively/personally last than this.  But for some people, suicide is scary.  The thought of "taking oneself out" is unpleasant, dissuading one from engaging in the action.  Honestly, the unpleasant thought could deal with the aforementioned afterlife consequences, the process, or the thought of possible failure.  Either way, such rash action is unpleasant.  This is why I think that people commit a more mundane, but no less effective, form of suicide.
     This form of suicide shares at least one aspect with "death suicide."  Both inhibit a future.  This other form of suicide is the tendency of an individual, when met with a fork in the road, to take the easiest path in order to prevent possible failure in the future: that is, to stagnate and make no decision.  But why would one engage in this type of suicide, this future or intellectual suicide?  Perhaps they are afraid of taking the harder road and failing.  Perhaps they are inundated with expectation or policy.  Maybe they are burnt out.  Either way, they are not engaging themselves on the path of highest self-betterment due to a fear of something.
     A lot more can be written on the subject as far as tools are concerned.  Last thought:  suicide, at any level, is about giving up.  There is no hope anymore.  Perhaps there is some learned helplessness here.  Either way, exploring hope with clients is probably one of the main tasks here.