How does evolution explain suicide?

[Moved from how does evolution explain suicide] You'd probably need to focus more on evolution of language and culture on top of the human mental substrate. Suicide often seems to be entangled with judgments involving a disconnect between actual and ideal states. Stresses of modern societies may exacerbate underlying tendencies. read more

And yet, suicide, even thoughts of suicide, makes no sense, at least from an evolutionary point of view. Humans, like all animals, are designed to pass along genes to the next generation. But ending your own life means, in stark evolutionary terms, cutting off, or harming your future reproductive success. read more

Suicide seems to be perhaps the ultimate maladaptive trait, other than, perhaps, infanticide of one's own children. De Catanzaro begins to explain suicide by saying that differential reproduction is in fact much more important to evolution than is "survival of the fittest". read more