The individualist position, which treats every person’s life outcomes as being entirely of their own making, represents both a deep moral callousness and a total indifference to empirical fact. We know that people are irrational, frail, and ambivalent, that they make choices they regret, that their brains lie to them about how much other people love them. Yet the “minding your own business” ethic is a core part of the national ideology. Your choices are your own, and if you don’t like the consequences, well, sucks for you. That line of libertarian-ish thinking is common even in cases where people’s choices are far less free than suicide; there is little sympathy for those devastated by economic crises, or drowning in medical bills. So it’s little surprise that suicide, which appears entirely freely-chosen, should be treated as an entirely private concern.