I am very familiar with the social factors in suicide. The way I have been treated socially is a big part of why I am often suicidal. I have cystic fibrosis, as does my oldest son. We have figured out how to get well when everyone claims it cannot be done. The world would like us to politely die so doctors and others can feel like they know what they are talking about. I am currently deeply in debt and homeless. I can get almost no one to take me seriously. I feel a bit like Galileo, a prisoner and shunned for speaking the truth about an important discovery. It is the kind of thing other people get Nobel prizes for. But I am an outcast and the world is very content with condemning me to death and putting up obstacles at every turn. So, that is a big part of why I often feel like "what is the point?"

I perhaps made a mistake in returning to HN. I really do not feel welcome here. Plenty of wealthy, influential people here have attacked me or otherwise behaved in a malicious fashion towards me. In the past, it has been okay for people to pillory me here. The community did not care if I got the crap kicked out of me. The rules about "respecting" others and not engaging in personal attacks apparently do not apply so as to protect me. This is hardly unique to HN. It is pretty normal in most online settings.

I am clear that part of the reason for that is that people who are very ill or who have loved ones who are very ill are deeply hurt by the idea that I am getting well when they are not. Trying to share information with them is routinely interpreted as making them look stupid and shaming them, even in cases where the ill person still lives and could yet be helped.

So I have spent a lot of years wrestling with how to diplomatically talk about hard subjects, my health being just one of them. And long experience informs me that speaking of this issue in a manner which could make the OP feel somehow at fault for his brother's death cannot bring his brother back but can do all kinds of harm to him and others involved in the situation.

I am unwilling to suggest that the OP could or should have done x, y, or z differently and then his brother "would" still be alive. We do not know the particulars of this case and that is the worst kind of Monday night quarterbacking imaginable.

I hope the OP's intent to have his brother's death not be in vain serves to get people talking and helps others. It is too late to help his brother. It is not too late to do serious damage to him and others by how we talk about this.

Anyway, I have a headache. I logged in to find my last submission to HN dead. I am not in the best place emotionally myself today.

I hope that helps/sorry if it is TMI (something I am often accused of).