What really caused Aaron Swartz's suicide?
I'm surprised that nobody has talked about what really caused Aaron Swartz's suicide. I don't want to play armchair psychologist here (I'm not a psychologist first of all, and I have never met or talked to Aaron). Nevertheless, there are some possibilities that, despite extensive discussions on HN, have not yet been voiced.

First of all, it's clear that while the lawsuit against Aaron aggravated the stress he was feeling (a completely normal reaction), the lawsuit by itself should not have caused such an extreme reaction. There are many people in the world who face such situations (and much worse), and while incredibly stressed, the vast majority of those individuals do not kill themselves.

We can also see from Aaron's blog entries, going way back, that he had been suffering from episodes of severe depression for years. He had even talked about suicide in some of those blog posts. Whatever Aaron had been wrestling with, it was already there before the lawsuit happened.

Reading his blog posts, watching his interviews, and listening to people who knew him well, what emerges is a person who was incredibly driven to fight... for something. It seems like that everything in his life was a gigantic struggle. The details don't matter as much. The spread of free information on the Internet, while a noble cause, in my opinion was simply the fight that Aaron's spirit landed on. If Aaron had not been involved with computers it would have been something else. Where did this fighting and struggling come from? Could it be a symbolic expression of a huge amount of anger?

I also found it curious that Aaron had been so driven to achieve and prove himself from such an early age. I read that at the tender age of 14 he was already out in the world interacting with people much older than him. There are a couple ways to look at that. One is to be impressed by his precociousness. The other is to ask -- why the hell was he doing that? There's nothing wrong with achievement. But why wasn't he being allowed to be a regular kid as well?

Another thing I found curious is that in all his blog posts about his struggles with various psychological and physical problems, he never mentioned anything about a support system. He seemed to be quite lonely with his troubles. Some of his friends wrote in their own blog posts after his death that he often rejected them and would isolate himself for months on end. Again, where did he learn to do that? Where was his natural support system? People who grow up with a lot of support and caring around them would not be struggling alone with such demons.

The reaction from his family struck me as very odd as well. First, it was his uncle who confirmed his death, nobody from his immediate family. And the only statements we heard from his father were angry statements that tried to blame the government for his son's death. His father's statements contained only anger. Not even compassion for his son.

I think that the key to Aaron's inner psyche is probably somewhere in Aaron's past. This is someone who was incredibly hurt at some point in time, and he was never able to come to terms with that. He probably wasn't even aware of it.

Aaron strikes me as someone who was abandoned very early on, left to struggle for himself. Where were his parents through all this time? The most important lessons to be learned from this have nothing to do with prosecutors, MIT, JSTOR, or Attorney Generals. It has everything to do with Aaron's abandonment. If anyone should be doing soul searching it should be his parents.