At Least 13 People Died by Suicide Amid U.K. Post Office Scandal, Report Says

  But suicide is an act (even if often either an irrational one committed by people in a disordered state of mind, or perhaps a desperate one by people with no path to happiness), and understanding any particular suicide is going to require understanding the thoughts and motivations of the person who killed themselves.

In this case, several people independently committed suicide due to largely identical circumstances. Sure, not everyone falsely implicated took the same action, but I don't think we need to look at their individual circumstances to understand the root cause.

  framing suicide more like a disease that acted upon them

These people started off with agency, sure, but being falsely accused by the government, and having government employees and contractors giving false testimony, took away much of that agency.

Could you or I be 100% certain we wouldn't react the same way?

> Could you or I be 100% certain we wouldn't react the same way?

Probably not - but when I say that we should not deemphasise their agency, I don't think I imply otherwise. The opposite, in fact: to even ask or try to answer the question you ask here - to consider how I would act if put in the circumstances of another person - is to view their suicide as agentic.

(Observe that you could not meaningfully ask, of someone who got lung cancer and died due to asbestos exposure, whether I could be certain I would not "react the same way" to asbestos exposure! That is the difference between the "disease" framing and the "act by an agent" framing.)