bumpkin said:
But... Here's the thing; people like this kid use suicide as a tool to get attention. They don't think of how it hurts the people who love them. Typically all they think about is how sorry they feel for themselves and that the world should throw pity at 'em. So I'm not at all sympathetic to the people who think the teacher was wrong. It sounds like sound advice to me.
So people are either genuinely suicidal and Darwin will take care of them; or they're attention seeking, manipulative narcissists who don't care who they hurt as long as they win attention?
Those two extremes do not cover the broad spectrum of mental heath issues that can result in a suicide attempt.
Let's say the kid
does just want attention. It's impossible to know whether this is because he's been or being abused, depressed and having fun fucking with people, depressed and genuinely seeking an emotional outlet, a spoilt brat hungry for empty validation, suffering from an unidentified mental health disorder, simply confused, or sincere in his desire to die but checked by the innate instinct of self preservation; just to name a few possibilities.
Is it reasonable to treat
every self-harming, attention-seeking kid with callous disregard just because a percentage of them are brats?
As for your sister, she might have become spoilt by your parents, but that doesn't negate what might be a genuine mental health disorder that set the whole thing in motion and still affects her to this day. Perhaps she could be treated to the point at which she can live a normal life if your parents took her to the right professionals, and if they stopped enabling her behaviour. Perhaps not. They might believe her continued existence outweighs the financial burden of keeping her, and it's reasonable of them to choose not to gamble with her life if that's the way they feel - in spite of how bratty she's become.