As long as you go through a long process of thinking out the decision, then yes it can be.

No a rational person would not feel the need to end their life in such a way A irrational person , can feel lost, sad and mentally off balance and hopefully would search out help for their troubles. There are so many places and phone numbers available for our society today and I pray they are strong enough to reach out Good question + 5

In my opinion, Suicide is never the answer! It is a permanent solution to a temporary problem. The remaining family and friends will be the ones to endure the pain and suffering of your action. This is just my personal thought on the matter.

this isn't a smart alek answer but probably to the person comitting suicide it is.

Yes- When faced with an incurable, painful, terminal illness that kills slowly.

Of course suicide can be rational... It'd take some fairly extraordinary circumstances (e.g. sacrificed to immediately and definitely save family's life, etc) but it CAN be done

If there is no hope or if you want to save face. One of the Chinese toymakers did, because he wanted to save face. I am not advocating suicide just stating the facts.

1)Things can ALWAYS get better. (apart from terminal illnesses obviously, but then I'd want to spend as much time as I could with loved ones, something COULD happen.. dunnoo) 2)It's pretty selfish..

Yes. If I were in the last stages of dying and suffering terribly I would consider it a rational decision, both for me and those who love me.

When it is the logical choice.

The ONLY time I condone suicide is in order to save more lives. For example, a disgruntled employee is hunting people in his former job site. A group of employees manages to keep clear and stay out of sight, but he is headed right for them. The majority of the group could escape through a side exit, but they need a distraction. If one decided to sacrifice himself so that the others could live, while technically suicide, would also be a selfless death. I do not condone suicide for medical reasons. Millions of people have suffered through the years. If you have a terminal illness, that sucks, and I know the pain would be great. However, think of your children/ancestors. Would you rather them say of you " fought cancer and lost in the end" or "gave up and killed himself" ? Sometimes, it is not winning a battle that defines us, but rather fighting the battle in the first place!

In my opinion, no. Never. Rationally, living is better than not-living. Even when living involves pain and difficulty, it is better than nothing. You could say that suicide is an *understandable* choice in certain situations, but that doesn't mean it's not irrational. On a kind of seperate note, I've learned a great deal about this topic in exploring the Disability blogs.. people who are on ventilators, who are unable to move in various degrees, who deal with extraordinary pain, and who still have valuable lives. In the face of a society that frequently implies that it would be better for everyone if they would just die. So I'm uncomfortable arguing that suicide is okay for *certain* people, because it implies that their lives have less value and can be easily thrown away, because they are ill or disabled. A lot of people criticize Dr. Kevorkian for this especially, for convincing a lot of people who were not necessarily *dying* that they would be better off dead. Look up The Gimp Parade for a really good example of a disability blog that covers these issues. Lastly, suicide is frequently a product of mental illness.. and I'd actually argue that it almost always is, in the face of our natural human survival instinct. A person with this mental illness should be encouraged to live and helped to live more easily, rather than encouraging them to die. But I go back and forth on this.. a terminally ill person who decides to stop treatment is different, in my mind, from inducing their own death by other means. I still think, though, that the rational choice is to survive, and the emotional choice is sometimes to avoid pain and suffering, and it's a matter of choosing between the two.

Three reasons I can think of: 1. As sacrifice for the greater good. 2. To end a terminal and miserable illness. 3. Being sucked out of the shuttle and tossed into space, alone and without help, save for that one little pill...

In a circumstance in which one's own death may provide life for others. The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the one.

The only truly "rational" reason for suicide to me would be to eliminate pain that you have no way of escaping otherwise, i.e., your life has no happiness due to the unremititng pain that you are powerless over. Earlier today, I asnwered on a different question, that I might commit suicide if I knew that I had inadvertently caused the death of one of my children. I still think that I might do so, but that is not a rational response: it is a guilt-ridden response. Rationally: losing your self forever can only, in my humble opinion, be exonerated by not wanting to be inside of yourself because your physical being causes you too much pain.

only to those who try

Yes. Most people only think is suicide good for them or not but they do not consider if it is good for the group. Many animals commit suicide, such as sick bees that refuse to return home and make the hive sick.