No, I’m saying that for most people with severe depression or a schizoaffective disorder, they suffer all of their life, even with medication and therapy, and their whole life they suffer suffer suffer and never get better. For depression, I’ve never met someone like this in real life, but I volunteer on a chatroom for people who need to talk (for any type of problem) and I’ve met a few people like this, who had tired their whole life with meds and psychology and they found no release.
I have talked to over 100 people on that site. 80% of those people had some type of psychological problem or psychological issue. I met a few, maybe 3, probably closer to 5, who were completely miserable and had tried meds and therapy many times. Only one said that he wished he had the option for assistance in terminating his life.
For schizoaffective disorder, the meds many of them have to take mean that they spend the majority of their waking hours “doped up”. The only meds that are strong enough to repress their delusions are so strong that they can not function normally. Some people, I think, do find some type of success, but from what I understand, most of them do not.
This is why I say you can not really judge another person unless you know what it is to suffer like they suffer. The only valid reason I can think of to not assist with ending the life of such a person - if - they want it, is the fact that family and loves ones will, of course, be affected. But at the end of the day the choice should be up to the individual.
Because we’re not actually talking about someone’s right to die. Everyone has the right to die. Suicide is not illegal. Getting the *means *to die without undue pain and mess is the tricky part. And so what we’re really talking about is the obligation for other people to *help *us die in the least yucky way possible.
We can already assume that the person requesting assistance dying wants to die. What we need to do is consider the impact on everyone else, including the healthcare workers, family and government. And that larger population is mostly made up of people without severe psychiatric illness, so I think their opinions should be heard and their concerns addressed, as well as ours.
I have lots of opinions about abortion, too, but I’ve never had one. Even if I don’t ever need one, I want them to remain safe and legal for other people. Likewise, I believe that if I hadn’t experienced severe psychiatric illness, I would continue to have a valid and valuable opinion about that, too. All voices deserve to be heard, even if the ultimate decision whether or not to avail themselves of the service lies with the individual person.
I disagree. It not necessarily about the obligation of others to help - just that they be free to help it they wanted to without fear of prosecution would be good.
Your points are all valid. Asking a doctor or a nurse to help someone end their life is a difficult thing to do, even for terminal painful cancer. What I mean is, few people, even doctors are going to consider the suffering of someone who has been depressed for 20 years to be on the same level as someone with painful terminal cancer.
I’m still a little confused. The “right to die” cases I am familiar with are for people who are not capable of ending their own lives in any straightforward way, or cannot resist medical care or force-feeding, for example.
If a nominally healthy and physically able person wants to die… there’s nothing stopping them. Unless the issue is that they want someone else to do it for them, or assist, in which case they are both selfish and unreasonable. They should neither ask for nor expect help, whether it’s legal or not. They are asking another person to carry the burden of their death, however ‘desired’ it may have been, and it’s a burden they can carry themselves.
There is an American movie Whose Life is it Anyway that examines the subject. I much prefer a very different French treatment in Amour as it feels less like a documentary.
This is true. But understandable, IMO. We have sufficient evidence and technology to be able to identify the average prognoses of different manifestations of cancer. We do not have the understanding about different manifestations of MDD. We know that some cancers are treatable and generally which ones and to what extent. We know that some types of mental illness are treatable, but not at all which ones or to what extent.
That makes people, even professionals, very uncomfortable. I’d hate to be the doctor who helped with the suicide of a cancer patient only to discover it was Stage 0 with a 99% survival rate. Mental health professionals don’t want to give the thumbs-up to suicide when the next round of treatment might alleviate the symptoms of MDD the patient is suffering.
eta: Not saying that reluctance is right or wrong, just that it’s understandable.
.
Asking someone who has suffered for years and years and years with crippling depression, for whom neither medication nor therapy has worked, asking that person to not ask for help in taking their own life is selfish and unreasonable. Would you say it was selfish and unreasonable for someone in a great deal of physical pain from cancer to ask a medical professional to help them painlessly end their life?
CLARIFICATION: There are people who have taken medication and done therapy for years, decades even, who find no relief. They are not that common, it is uncommon for a person to get absolutely no relief from medication and therapy, but, it does happen. You seem to indicate if they had just waited longer something would of fixed their problem. But, if for example, someone suffered for 17 years with crippling depression and was on medication and therapy all/most of that time… why would you think anything would change in the next 3 months or the next 3 years?
There are plenty (perhaps not scads, and certainly not a majority) of healthcare professionals who are willing to assist suicides. I’m one of them. But I can’t, not without losing my license and going to jail.
You’re not so much confused as behind the times. Oregon, Washington, and Vermont, for example, will allow people with a terminal diagnosis (prognosis </= 6 months) a prescription for drugs which will end their life. They don’t have to be taken right away, or in the presence of the physician. They can hold onto them as long as they like before they decide to take them.
The caveat is that they must be able to take them on their own, without assistance. This is where we have the “right to die” without the kind of assisted suicide you’re talking about. They are becoming known as “death with dignity” states. But these cases specifically preclude actual assisted suicide in the moments before death. A doctor can write you a prescription for the pills; he cannot hand them to you or place them in your mouth. (I believe. It’s been a while since I read the laws.)
But that’s the whole point. If a doctor is willing to help someone end their life (write them a prescription and tell them how many pills to take) for someone who has painful cancer but will be dead within a year, but they won’t do the same for someone who is going to suffer with depression for the next 10 or 15 or more years, the doctor is saying one type of suffering is more valid than the other. On moral grounds, that is wrong.
If you make a choice between two options and set one as being more deserving than the other, you are definitely making a choice as to what has validity.
Valid: having a sound basis in logic or fact; reasonable or cogent.
“a valid criticism”
Some of us are concerned about abuses as much as anything else. Historically, there have been instances where the pointer moved from “voluntary euthanasia” to “kill the defective regardless”. Such concerned people do not want that to happen again.
Other people are concerned that if it is deemed cheaper to euthanize than treat people will be pressured to choose death.
Some just plain think killing another human being is wrong for any reason and shouldn’t be done under any circumstances.
There may well be other reasons I’m just not thinking of at the moment.
So… it’s not just a matter of being mean or heartless to an individual.
So if a doctor is willing to assist in the suicide of one patient but not another, regardless of their circumstances, he is inherently making a moral judgement about their relative suffering?
That backs up my point. When you say “regardless of the circumstances”. That indicates a significant difference between a terminal painful condition and a lifelong curse of untreatable depression.