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I think suicide is RARELY hereditary. But when it is, I highly doubt it evolved over thousands of years. Evolution invents mechanisms for perpetuating good genes. But bad genes just automatically disappear (the animal dies or can't reproduce). Evolution doesn't have to invent that mechanism. So I think inherited suicidal tendencies are simply "defective" genes dying off, but not an evolved trait.
I think suicide really has to do with our understanding of death. Humans are smart enough to realize that death will end suffering, despite our instinctive will to survive.
Still, blazinx1 brought up a good point. When I talk about suicide I mean killing yourself because your depressed etc. Dying to save other people is definitely an evolved trait. The people you die to save are typically going to be your family or tribe which all have SIMILAR genes. So a "brave" tribe is able to fight off competing tribes, and is more likely to survive. Societies really function more like a single super-organism. This is probably how patriotism, loyalty, and religious tendencies evolved. They united people in fighting a common competitor.
Now some people even speculate that schizophrenia may have evolved. A crazy person is more likely to do something revolutionary, so a society might benefit if 1 out of a 100 are crazy. Maybe fire and spears were invented by an insane person. Those societies could then kill off all the competing tribes. It's farfetched, but who knows.
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