One of my friends and another of my acquaintances in the local LBGT community have chosen suicide in the last two years, both because of bad medical situations (one due to MS, the other due to being seriously disabled after being rear-ended by a bus on the freeway). LBGTs, of which I am one, have an unusually high suicide rate to begin with, and when compromised health is added to that, I am certain the rate goes up (not that anyone would necessarily study it formally).
While I wasn't really "close" to either person, I was shaken by their deaths in part because they prompted me to look more closely at my own ongoing "calculation" of whether all this stuff I go through with discrimination and medical problems is worth it or not. (The outcome of that calculation so far is that it is all lessons, and that trying to somehow stop the lessons is probably pointless.)
I thoroughly (if not fully) appreciate the reasons for their decisions, however, and I tend to think of it as part of their life stories and "learning curves." I don't see it as some kind of special case because they happened to commit suicide. Since they are gone, all I can really do with it is learn what I can from their experiences, which is to say I look at what my advice to them would be now, and then see if maybe that advice would perhaps apply to me.
