ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the meaning of the word rational, especially because everyone who comments on the issue of whether suicide can be a rational choice means something different when they use the word. Before examining whether the decision to commit suicide can be rational, it is interesting to consider whether suicide is always the result of a personal decision. There are four types of suicide that people sometimes consider to be rational: suicides carried out for a cause such as martyrdom; suicide as a reaction to a lingering, painful, and incurable illness; suicide in response to the absence of any pleasure in life; and love-pact suicides. Suicidal people usually feel subjectively that they are making a decision, it is appropriate and interesting to examine the rationality of the decision. The issue is dealt with in detail by cognitive psychotherapists who believe that the thinking patterns of all distressed people are irrational.
