Doctors in Belgium have granted a woman, who is in otherwise good health the right to die. She has suffered by all accounts from some major phyciatric illnesses for most of her life. I can sympathize, I have suffered from (far less serious and debilitating) depression and anxiety myself.
My own opinion on the “right to die” is quite clear; I am opposed to it (DNR, discontinuing treatment etc is one thing, deliberate ending of life is quite another). I don’t want to get into a debate on that issue. The issue is as I see it:
If you support the principle, should “right to die” be extended to people who are not suffering from terminal illness or extremely serious trauma, where there is no hope for recovery and or management?
Do you support it for cases where the illness is only mental not physical?
Hmm. I admit I haven’t thought a lot on the subject, but my initial thoughts are in favor of “right to die”. However this particular example makes me uncomfortable, since there is no logically consistent way to say that one kind of suffering is unbearable enough to end a life, but another kind is not.
To think out loud a bit:
Does Belgium’s “right to die” require any medical evaluation of the possibility of successful treatment? I know depression can be intractable, but it can also go into remission or become more manageable, spontaneously or with any of a number of possible treatments. That’s the most objective way I can think to distinguish depression and other mental disorders from more obviously “physical” suffering.
I’m uncomfortable with the idea of euthanasia if there are still reasonable treatment options that haven’t been tried.
On the other hand, I’m uncomfortable with requiring some minimum number of years of suffering through ineffective treatments, or requiring that something as invasive as (say) electroconvolsive therapy or deep brain stimulation be tried before offering euthanasia. (And yes, I realize that modern ECT isn’t anything like the barbaric image it has in popular culture.)
Absent a more compelling medical opinion, I’m leaning towards making no distinction between “mental” and “physical” suffering, even though my instincts say otherwise.
Yes, if it makes life that difficult for a person. A person in horrible pain for a non-terminal illness should also be able to do so, IMO. Sure, a cure might come around in a year, but it might not. If informed of the relevant research in regards to their condition, an adult decides the agony of continuing to live like this outweighs the possibility of a potential future cure one day, it’s their decision to make.
IIRC, the woman in question was evaluated by doctors who okay-ed her decision. She’d also been in an institution since she was 21.
Who’s life is it? If it’s mine, I get to decide if I’m alive tomorrow or not. I get to make poor decisions, even life and death ones. Try to convince me that life is worth living if you wish. If I still want to die, it seems more humane to help me do it rather than make me figure out a way that might be messy and traumatic to my family.
TBH I’m not at all “interested” in hearing the opinion on whether or not a person with severe psychiatric problems has a right to die, unless, that person themself has or have had, severe psychiatric problems.
It might be more humane for you if I help you. Not for me.
As to the OP, the damnable part is how difficult it is to quantify psychic and emotional pain, and how difficult it is to know if a mental illness is treatable. There might well be a direct comparison between some manifestations of mental illness and, say, pancreatic cancer. But we still don’t know enough about mental illness to be able to make that comparison. I find it a lot easier to support suicide in the face of terminal and painful physical illness than terminal and painful mental illness, and I work in the mental health field.
While I realize ECT is scary stuff, I have two good friends who found modern ECT beneficial. I would not recommend it as a first treatment, and I’ve also known people harmed by it, but it may be worth trying in otherwise intractable cases.
While I am uncomfortable with either euthanasia or allowing/assisting suicide for mental illness, when the illness is severe, long-term, is not responsive to treatments including those of last resort, and no improvement or recovery can reasonably be expected… I’m not entirely opposed. Let’s say… open to being convinced and willing to debate the question. I’d want a crapload of safeguards around it, though.
Well, then, respectfully, perhaps you should understand that people shouldn’t make judgments about other people’s conditions unless they have been in that position themself. They really have no right to do that. Well, they have a legal right to do so but the have no moral justification to do so. The proper reaction when seeing people do this should be frustration. Or are you in the habit of blindly accepting things you consider to be morally corrupt?
The New Yorker had an article about a similar Belgian case recently, and it made me very uncomfortable. The article made is sound like there was no way to know whether the woman in question really wanted to die, or whether it was the “mental illness talking”.
The question is how curable (treatable?) is mental illness, and does a mentally ill person have the necessary capacity to knowingly make such a decision.
I can tell you’re passionate about this issue, but I’m not following. Are you suggesting that any discussion of whether or not someone has a right to suicide is inherently morally corrupt?
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I don’t really understand why so many people feel, by default, entitled to get in the middle of such a painful decision for someone else. To be clear, I DO understand loved ones wanting to get involved. I DON’T understand anyone thinking that their opinion is in any way relevant to some stranger’s misery, particularly to the point of turning it into a legal framework.
Every time one of these discussions comes up, the first thing I think about: If someone’s dog is suffering, we give them the option to put it out of it’s misery. If someone’s family member is suffering, we insist that they extend that suffering in every way possible. Empathy, I guess.
Yeah, but…they may cure you tomorrow…or next week…or 50 years from now. Since it’s your life, and not mine, I think it is incumbent on me to impose my optimism on you. If you were thinking as clearly as I am, I am sure you would understand that my opinion of your condition is more important than yours.