Then we try harder.
Oh, really? From personal experience, a phone call had a policeman at my door, with ambulance on standby. I was pissed with my therapist but no way suicidal. Mad as hell, but not suicidal. But if the cop had thought me suicidal, I’d have been a guest of the psych. ward for at least the next 3 days.
Suicide, assisted or not, is an end to unbearable pain that the medications just don’t reach. And it is cruel and selfish to make a mentally ill person who has tried everything to no avail go on living in pain so you won’t have to feel sad.
At that level of pain, there is no thought of anything or anybody, just ending the pain. It’s like being in an overheated room, where the only exit is a window. At a certain temperature, you’ll jump out that window, even knowing it’s on the 20th floor.
There’s a special place in hell for clueless people who tell a depressed, bi-polar, schizophrenic, etc., person to “hang in there; it’ll get better.”
“Try harder” is a laudable drive but “try harder” is no guarantee of success.
A person without physical issues ought to be able to manage to commit suicide without help or permission from anyone. Insisting doctors get involved and society give approval seems pretty selfish.
Very often there are “physical issues” and that is the most terrifying thing of all. In at least one of the two cases that were the focus of the Supreme Court decision, the person had ALS. There are also other diseases like that which in their terrible terminal stages can deprive a person not just of mobility and freedom of action but even the ability to communicate. Anticipation of that possibility was why she sought and obtained an exemption from the BC Supreme Court to allow physician-assisted suicide in her specific case, which the Supreme Court of Canada has now codified into a general constitutional principle.
I will also say that no one is seeking societal "permission"or any greater help than the compassion we would have for a dog or cat that had to be put down. That does not seem “selfish” to me.
But you don’t consider it cruel or selfish to put the people you love through hell because you hurt too much?
When I was ten years old I woke up late for school because nobody had woken me up in time, only to discover paramedics working on my mother after she swallowed an entire bottle of aspirin and started throwing up blood. She’d decided she wanted to die because of the circumstances our family was in at the time and because she was suffering from clinical depression and PTSD.
Thankfully, she survived and lived to regret what she’d done. Your ilk would have let her die and left me and my sister without a mother.
If I were to make my exit on my own terms, the people who are close to me would experience a certain measure of grief. But they would know that I’m the one who has been living in hell.
I doubt there’s a single person on this board who would NOT have called 911 to help your mother and made sure you and your sister were taken care of.
As for Dan Savage and the other patients I’ve been acquainted with, some made it and some didn’t.
Wow. That is a horrible attempt to co-opt a completely different message. Do go on, though. Let us know what Dan Savage thinks when you write to him.
Here’s a clue - schizophrenia is not caused by bullying and stigma.
Well, I thought the entire topic of this thread was whether euthanasia for non-terminal patients was OK or not. Are you now saying you’re against it? Don’t bullied homosexuals have an absolute right to end their lives if they can’t handle the pain, and shouldn’t the state assist them in doing so?
But neither is suicide the answer to schizophrenia.
Smapti, My sympathies for your personal experience. Those with treatable conditions should be helped. But that doesn’t justify your assertion that all life, regardless of quality, is so valuable that it must be prolonged at all costs. For your own life, that philosophy is fine (although it does beg questions such as, “Do you drive a car?”), but it doesn’t explain why you should be able to control other people’s decisions. What qualifies you to determine what actions are rational and what constitutes a mentally sound person? I am a well-educated, productive member of society. Suppose I decide to go sit on an island and just eat crabs and swim in the ocean for the rest of my life. As far as my contributions to society, that would be “…the cessation of everything that [I am]…, was, and ever could be.” Would you then have the right to forbid my decision?
Who asked you to conceive of such a mindset? You don’t have to. All you have to do is conceive that other people can conceive of such a mindset. There are, for example, a whole bunch of people in this very thread telling you they can conceive of such a mindset. So if you can’t conceive that others conceive… it’s about like saying you don’t believe water is wet. The evidence is right here in front of you that your way of thinking is not the only way of thinking.
Wrong. What we’re working for is to create a way in which suicide can happen that hurts no one but the person doing it. Not the building jumping, trains, jumping off bridges, shooting in the bathroom suicides, but premeditated intentional death by overdose. If either of my grandparents had chosen it, they would have hurt no one. They were ready to die, we were all ready for them to die, and while no one looked forward to the day, no one was hurt by their (natural, non-suicide) deaths, either. We all talked beforehand and all wished their was a way for them to end it on their terms.
How do you feel about DNR orders and Living Wills? Are you okay with someone saying, “Doc, if my heart stops, I don’t want CPR. Just let me go.” or “I don’t want a feeding tube, just let me go.”? If you are not, then we’re on such different continents that there’s no point in discussing it. If you are in favor of planning end of life care with such directives, then I wonder why it’s better to die through inaction than action.
I consider it equally as cruel as forcing someone to live because to lose them would hurt me too much. Absolutely identical. So faced with identical conflicting pain, I’m in favor of personal choice.
That sounds truly horrific, and I’m sorry you went through that. I really am. Thank you for letting us know, though. It really does help make a lot of what you’ve said make more sense. It’s an emotional wounded child response, not an intellectual one.
No, we would not, and it’s frankly insulting that you say so. Everyone here has been talking about the right to physician assisted suicide or right to die with medical assistance (prescriptions). No one has said that unplanned, undocumented, unmedically assisted people in crisis should be left to die. I will specifically say that had I found her or been called to the scene, I would have done everything in my power to save her. After she was stabilized, I’d get her into treatment for her clinical depression and PTSD (which you indicate was at least partially successful, as she lived to regret her suicide attempt).
Of course a suicide could affect others, but not inherently. And as we’ve discussed previously, public suicides are a tiny minority of all suicides.
Agreed.
I know, that’s why I said “for the most part”. But it’s not something that the law generally gets involved in, is it? And it’s not the normally-cited reason for why suicide is illegal.
OK, but one issue with that is that because suicide is illegal, companies cannot sell devices or substances to aid suicides. So people resort to painful and/or scary methods, that may leave one horribly disfigured or brain damaged if they are unsuccessful, and traumatize anyone that finds the body either way.
(FTR it seems hanging is not a bad way to go; IIRC you pass out from lack of blood to the brain before you suffocate. And that’s pretty much a method available to everyone.
Even if this is right though, and everyone knew it, things still aren’t quite that simple. When I contemplated suicide, I ruled out hanging. I live alone, and I was concerned that if my neck was not constricted enough, for whatever reason, I would hang there until I starved to death.)
Hanging is supposed to break the neck - that is why the knot is large (creates leverage by holding the rope away from the head) and the drop distance important - too little and no effect except strangulation (bad show), too much and the head pops off (also bad show).
I will point out that, if the person’s hands are tied behind them, a plastic bag over the head will ensure suffocation (the hands might have a reflexive action).
Abbie Hoffman used 150 phenobarbitols - way overkill, but: just how much of what IS a sure thing?
This is where the MD or the pharmacist enters the picture - except they can’t, and, in fact are likely to have you locked up for asking.
And this is where the law needs to change and change now.
All the young folks who resent the Boomers for taking up space and money should be out campaigning for “Suicide on Demand”.
I was of course referring to hanging as a method of suicide, not execution.
Yeah. That’s why I advocate this. I’d rather not have them waiting on my deathbed for months on end, the grieving process dragging itself out as I slowly wither away, draining our resources to keep my husk of a body alive. Physician-assisted suicide for people in that sort of situation isn’t “putting the people you love through hell” any more than putting down your dog instead of trying to artificially extend its life is putting your loved ones through hell.
If it weren’t for this, I’d give you hell for co-opting Dan Savage’s campaign for something it obviously isn’t meant for. But you do realize that there’s a difference between someone going through an undiagnosed, uncounciled depression and doing something rash and stupid, and someone really looking over their options after treatment and deciding that they’re done, right? Talking it over with their family and loved ones, coming to an understanding, and ending their lives in a clinical setting?
Guys, this is not a rational argument. Smapti will not see reason, for the same reason someone who watched their family die in front of their eyes in Auschwitz might not ever be able to accept that some people in Nazi Germany were actually decent people. Let’s stop trying to make him do so. Please. This is a waste of time.
And yeah, this ranks way up there in the “most tasteless, awful arguments I’ve ever seen on SDMB” list. What the hell, dude?
I’m opposed to both, because they’re tantamount to suicide and because either one constitutes a medical professional willfully neglecting his duty to preserve human life.
I do not acknowledge that it is possible for a rational person to come to a decision that suicide is the best option.
That sounds rather pleasant to me, although I’m concerned that an all-crab diet might land you with a pretty bad case of scurvy if you’re not planning to bring some lemon juice along for dippin’.
Maybe you’ve discussed that previously but I haven’t. I’d like to see some supporting facts for that assertion. What percentage of suicides are public suicides?
Also - the effect of such suicides can be out of proportion to their frequency, especially in cases were there is an actual death toll beyond the suicide.
I think you also have to take into account that there is a segment of suicides that want to hurt other people, take others with them, etc. Think of murder-suicides, some of the mass killers that gun people down and then take out themselves, and so on. Yes, they’re a minority of suicides but legalizing and facilitating suicide for, say, the terminally ill will not eliminate these folks.
No, but it’s one factor. A suicide usually does cause pain and grief among the survivors, and a hefty dose of anger isn’t uncommon, either. It’s understandable that people want to prevent things that cause pain to themselves. Suicide can also deprive society of a person’s contributions - not so much an issue for end-of-life suicides but more so for physically healthy people who are raising children, working, and so on.
Certainly, other society’s than those steeped in Judeo-Christian ethics have been more tolerant of suicide than ours, but I don’t know of any society that is favor of unjustified suicide. The allowed reasons differ, but there always seems to be some sort of criteria involved.
In the case of physical issues, then of course they ought to be helped, though I don’t think anyone in particular should be required to help them.
Do we really need companies profiting from suicides with the invention of new self-killing devices? I’m pro-suicide, but that does not seem like a great idea. There are already plenty of normal non-suicide-specific things to use, and one needn’t pick only one at a time.