I also ran into that suicide phrase. My experiences are not unlike yours and I don't like to think of my friend who committed suicide as a patient who was overcome by disease. Rather, they were very meticulous and precise about ending their life.
It begs the question: can we represent this thing (somebody ends their own life) in precisely the right way? No, language is insufficient. All cases are different.
When I went to school and learned about linguistics and cultural analysis etc the appropriate way to deal with this insufficiency of language was to use many descriptions and ambiguities. So that you create a general field of meaning around the inexpressible thing.
Apparently we were all wrong; we just lacked the proper wording.
Yeah, I think that's right. I don't really have any objection to either "committed suicide" or "died by suicide". Language can only ever be an approximation of experience so I think it's fine and sensible to use a variety of terms in these types of situations.
It begs the question: can we represent this thing (somebody ends their own life) in precisely the right way? No, language is insufficient. All cases are different.
When I went to school and learned about linguistics and cultural analysis etc the appropriate way to deal with this insufficiency of language was to use many descriptions and ambiguities. So that you create a general field of meaning around the inexpressible thing.
Apparently we were all wrong; we just lacked the proper wording.