So does contraception, yet we don't consider people using it mentally ill.
I only say this to imply that "going against our very nature" isprobably not the main reason we link suicide with mental ilness, not to be disrespectful or anything. My mother killed herself so I am not someone to mock suicidal people.
> If anyone as any counter points I'd love to hear them - but for the most part I think suicide stems from mental instability or an otherwise inevitable physical death (terminal illness, old age, etc).
My mother had been diagnosed as depressed so at least part of society deemed her mentally ill, so the link from that to suicide can be made. However, having dealth with a similar diagnosis myself, and having learned to properly cope with it while staying as far away from psychiatric medication as physically possible I am quite skeptic about mental diagnosis.
On "Lila", Robert Pirsig proposes the completely not medical and just-a-personal-theory idea that, however, resonates a lot with me, that "crazy" is a social thing (you're only crazy if we have 'non-crazy' people to compare yourself against) and that taking such people to anthropologists in the hope of helping them find a culture where they would be a better fit could yield better benefits than psychiatry. Personally, while I did not physically relocate to another place, I severed myself from a big part of society that I found harmful and I have been as good as can be ever since (12+ years now).
