Ha! Yes, from my dad in fact... he didn't say it with malicious intent, but I had just essentially rocked his world with an attempt and was in hospital for that very reason.

Oddly enough, it used to be illegal in this country to attempt suicide. Had this recollection that at one point, it was punishable by execution.. but I can't find any evidence of that on line.

"The Suicide Act 1961 (9 & 10 Eliz 2 c 60) is an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. It decriminalized the act of suicide in England and Wales so that those who failed in the attempt to kill themselves would no longer be prosecuted."

(additional note: it can still be a crime in Scotland, also part of the UK, if done in a public place and is classified as a 'breach of the peace')

along with a further explanation:

"Suicide may be defined as the act of intentionally ending one's own life. Before the Suicide Act 1961, it was a crime to commit suicide, and anyone who attempted and failed could be prosecuted and imprisoned, while the families of those who succeeded could also potentially be prosecuted. In part, that criminalization reflected religious and moral objections to suicide as self-murder. Augustine and Thomas Aquinas had formulated the view that whoever deliberately took away the life given to them by their Creator showed the utmost disregard for the will and authority of God and jeopardized their salvation, encouraging the Church to treat suicide as a sin. By the early 1960s, however, the Church of England was re-evaluating its stance on the legality of suicide, and decided that counselling, psychotherapy and suicide prevention intervention before the event took place would be a better solution than criminalisation of what amounted to an act of despair in this context.[3]"

Both cited on Wiki Suicide Act 1961 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

In some countries such as India, a failed attempt is still punishable by up to a year in prison.

All of the above is slightly off the beaten track of what I was looking at... but it plays a part in the historic rational of depression and acts of desperation.