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[paShadoWn]

Cuz its too cruel and unrealistic for madness to be unavoidable death sentence. Eaten by elefant? Okay. Dragged into water and mauled by carp? Okay. But dead from aimlessly wandering around and not eating? Wot, other dorfs are so uncaring they cannot even feed him and console trying to bring him back? In Rimworld, sharoebstvo passes on its own and berzerking ends on down so no crazy fort-destroying insanity spirals.

[Shonai_Dweller]

Cuz its too cruel and unrealistic for madness to be unavoidable death sentence. Eaten by elefant? Okay. Dragged into water and mauled by carp? Okay. But dead from aimlessly wandering around and not eating? Wot, other dorfs are so uncaring they cannot even feed him and console trying to bring him back? In Rimworld, sharoebstvo passes on its own and berzerking ends on down so no crazy fort-destroying insanity spirals.

In the middle ages, unless you were the king, going crazy and randomly attacking your mates with lethal force was very much a death sentence. Completely realistic.

And it's been years since one dwarf's insanity lead to an irreversible tantrum spiral.

[Dozebôm Lolumzalěs]

There are temporary forms of insanity. These fit the bill. There are also permanent forms of insanity. They are permanent. This is okay. If you didn't want them to die, you should have helped them when they were tantrumming.

[NW_Kohaku]

The game doesn't have "ordinary" mental illnesses modeled yet (wait a few more years...) so what is in the game right now is a long-standing placeholder that exists as a "failure state" for dwarves whose needs were severely underserved.  "Insanity" right now kills dwarves because it's meant to be a parallel for when more anger-prone go berserk.  All three of the current failure state insanities kill the dwarves that are afflicted with the permanent version of the illness because that is the threat the game makes to force you to use the systems to take care of your dwarves' mental state. 

Basically, the game is saying what Dozebom is saying, that if you don't want them going insane, you should have stepped in before it was an unstoppable problem. 

Dwarf Fortress is not a game of disaster management, it's a game of disaster prevention.  By the time a disaster is on your doorstep, it's too late to do anything about it but lock down the fortress and hope it takes as few of your dwarves as possible.

[IndigoFenix]

The best way of modeling mental illness might be a feedback loop due to the lesser forms of insanity.  For example, if a tantruming dwarf damaging an object or injuring a friend caused their stress to increase.  This would require a rework of the motive system, because right now DF creatures are pretty good at judging what will make them happy, while real humans are not.

It would certainly help if dwarves could feed, or try to feed, their insane friends who are incapable of feeding themselves.

Depression needs a more decisive method of suicide.  While malnourishment is a common symptom of depression, starvation is one of the most painful deaths and is probably not an ideal means of suicide.

[NW_Kohaku]

Depressed dwarves will try to drown themselves or perform other forms of suicide if they are available. It may not always be apparent a drowned dwarf is a deliberate suicide, however, and it's far from common for those dwarves to even be found rather than "missing". Starvation is merely the option that is always available when no others are. 

[Dozebôm Lolumzalěs]

The feedback loop is already somewhat present.

[Madmachine]

If dwarves are given the chance to recover from insanity; one thing's for certain, and that's that there should be some sort of permanent damage leftover. Maybe dwarves' personalities change after recovering from insanity. Maybe they pick up some eccentricities from their former condition, possibly alienating them from their friends and family. Insanity should have the same sort of long-term effect on the mind as scarring from major injuries has on the body.

[Deboche]

I like the idea of bringing them back from insanity, though never from failed moods.

In line with what Madmachine was saying, the dwarf could also become more prone to insanity in the future or more resilient to it, depending on personality, number of relationships and so on. So many factors go into someone becoming insane...

[Ezekhiel2517]

Cuz its too cruel and unrealistic for madness to be unavoidable death sentence. Eaten by elefant? Okay. Dragged into water and mauled by carp? Okay. But dead from aimlessly wandering around and not eating? Wot, other dorfs are so uncaring they cannot even feed him and console trying to bring him back? In Rimworld, sharoebstvo passes on its own and berzerking ends on down so no crazy fort-destroying insanity spirals.

Maybe designated a wing of the hospital to mental illness. It would be great if they do not recover entirely but become crazy prophets that settle on caves, or start doing really crazy things like demential works of art, or hear voices that tell them to travel this spiritual journeys to caverns and then find lost treasures

[NW_Kohaku]

Once again, it's sort of missing the point of the mechanic to let them recover.  It's like saying that if a dwarf starves to death, and you bring the corpse some food, they should come back to life.

Terminal insanity is a failure state in gameplay terms.  It comes about because you failed to satisfy needs so long and so severely that the absolute worst outcome comes to pass. Dwarves linger on after hitting the breaking point because having them spontaneously die of depression wouldn't make logical sense, but there still has to be a point of no return for the game's threat that you have to care about the dwarves' mental state to have any weight at all. 

Terminal insanity shouldn't be common much like starvation shouldn't be common, you should have to seriously screw up to see it, but they're really there for the same reason: Hunger exists so that food and the agriculture system have meaning.  Insanity exists so that the thoughts system and stress have meaning.  They exist to threaten you with bad things if you don't properly use the game systems, because without those bad things waiting to happen, you could just go without feeding your dwarves or you could just utterly ignore the happiness/stress of dwarves.

The arguments you are making ignores the purpose they serve and why they exist in this game.

[Deboche]

Once again, it's sort of missing the point of the mechanic to let them recover.  It's like saying that if a dwarf starves to death, and you bring the corpse some food, they should come back to life.

If you starve, you die. There will be a point when food won't save you though you haven't died yet. But you can starve for a while, eat and recover. You'll still suffer from severe consequences, probably have some long term damage but you'll live. A dwarf should be able to go insane and recover if he gets help in time. It happened to Kerouac.

[Bumber]

Once again, it's sort of missing the point of the mechanic to let them recover.  It's like saying that if a dwarf starves to death, and you bring the corpse some food, they should come back to life.

If you starve, you die. There will be a point when food won't save you though you haven't died yet. But you can starve for a while, eat and recover. You'll still suffer from severe consequences, probably have some long term damage but you'll live. A dwarf should be able to go insane and recover if he gets help in time. It happened to Kerouac.

They do. Tantrums exist as a warning sign. If it gets to insanity you didn't get them help in time.

[Deboche]

But tantrums aren't the same as insanity. They're irrational but so is most sane behaviour.

Isn't that what this suggestion is about? That they should go crazy without immediately becoming totally lost to insanity?

[NW_Kohaku]

But tantrums aren't the same as insanity. They're irrational but so is most sane behaviour.

Isn't that what this suggestion is about? That they should go crazy without immediately becoming totally lost to insanity?

They already do.  There are times they'll go depression (recoverable lesser form of melancholy) , oblivious (lesser form of stark raving mad), or have tantrums (berserk) but recover.  The tantrum is the warning sign that this is the last stage possible before terminal insanity. 

Or in other words, yes, tantrum is a minor, recoverable insanity, as far as game mechanics go before you get to terminal insanity.

Key word terminal.  It's supposed to kill your dwarves because you dun screwed up when you ignore the warning bouts of catatonia until they never snap out of it.