[johnorourke]

"died by suicide" is just a modern replacement for "committed suicide", because that phrase dates back to when it was a crime, so it's regarded as making the victim look bad.

[tjwebbnorfolk]

I say this as someone whose father killed himself when I was in 5th grade:

The "victims" who suffer after a suicide are the living, not the dead. These kinds of "modernizations" are transparent PC nonsense made up by well-intentioned do-gooders who have no idea how to represent the interests of other people who have a lived experience that they don't understand.

The person is dead either way. There's literally no way to sugarcoat this fact. We'd rather you just speak in plain, honest language than trying to make it sound less bad somehow.

[CrazyStat]

What makes “committed suicide” any more plain or honest than “died by suicide”?

[stirfish]

That's a really hard thing to go through. I'm sorry you had to bear that as a fifth grader.

It's possible that both you and your dad are victims in different ways.

[JdeBP]

For context: Suicide was a crime in the United Kingdom until 1961.

* https://legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/Eliz2/9-10/60/contents

* https://bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-14374296

[lanfeust6]

Except colloquially no one today thinks the word has any bearing on whether the victim looks bad. It just means they're responsible for the act.

I guess some people take comfort in the idea that suicide is thrust on people and they take no responsibility for their actions.

[lostmsu]

This seems to be a common topic in the current pendulum swing.

[wat10000]

Healthy, sane people in good situations don't kill themselves.

It follows from that fact that if someone kills themselves, at least one of those things was not true. And those things can and often are thrust on people, or at least occur against the will of the person.

In this case, a bad situation was thrust on a whole bunch of people, and it ended up killing some of them.