You appear to be saying that you don’t want to get into a debate about the right to die when suffering from a terminal illness because you already believe there should be no such right, but you DO want to get into a debate about the right to die when suffering from a mental illness.
Are you perchance trying to put forward a debate that you think is a slam-dunk win for “your side”, and then extending that back to try to prove that there should be no right to die under any circumstances? Kind of a case study in how you were right all along? Because that’s how it looks to me.
Here’s how I feel about it. The situations are no different. There is always a right to die. But this has to be balanced with the societal and medical responsibility to do everything we can to help the person. This is the moral imperative of health care. When a person has a terminal illness that doctors concur is degenerative and increasingly debilitating, and may eventually rob them of the ability even to end their own lives, then the moral imperative consistent with reason and compassion is to respect their wish to end their lives at a certain point. With mental illness the same criteria apply, it just happens to be counter-intuitive because for many of us, deep down inside we seem to think that the cure to all pathological depression is to tell the person to shape up and cheer up. It isn’t. Such a person deserves all the medically guided help we can give them, whatever that may mean in the circumstances, whatever that outcome may be. I would hope that it would be very rare indeed that ending their lives would be the better outcome, but “rare” is not the same as “impossible”.
It might, yes, or at least the doctor’s perception of a difference. And of course medically they are different. Apples and oranges in medical terms, two entirely different conditions.
If the doctor agrees to provide end-of-life counseling and support to one cancer patient but not a patient with an entirely different type of cancer, is he making a moral judgement?
Look, I’m not “mad” at you and I’m not saying you are a “bad” person, but at the same time, it seems to me like the conversation you are having is “doctors shouldn’t help people who are depressed end their life.” The conversation I am having is “doctors who are willing to help a patient end their life should also provide the same service for people who have chronic untreatable lifelong depression”.
I don’t know anything near enough to say this. How good is the newspaper reporting this? Does she say she wants to die every day, or just most days? For how many days has she been saying this?
Was anyone with her when she talked to the newspaper? Was it possible for them to check whether she said the same things with and without them?
How good is the psychiatric hospital? Is she unpopular with her caregivers? Is she involuntarily committed to an institution she hates?
Does she have a criminal history that has anything to do with her being kept in the hospital? (If so, the question then is whether prisoners generally, who hate their prison – probably for good reason – should be helped to die.)
A big question is: Who profits by her death financially?
I’m not thinking Belgium is a particularly bad place, but there are substantial pockets of bad medical care (and bad legal oversight) everywhere.
No one has mentioned the pain that convicted criminals, executed by lethal injection, often go through in the US. It may be that killing a person who wants to be killed is less likely to turn into a torture session. It may be that in Belgium they just do things better. But I’m not assuming that. All I know about the hospital is that it is failing when it comes to treating this patient.
The slippery slope is not entirely a fallacy, and some people fear that, as in hte past, allowing certain types of mercy killings will lead to killing not so merciful involving a lot more people. So, to protect those who might be killed who do not want to be, or who may be pressured to die, the small number of people who might otherwise be justified in receiving euthanasia are denied it. It’s a notion that it’s better than a few people suffer rather than many people suffer.
I don’t always subscribe to that view, but it is out there.
I don’t think it’s a question of validity. It’s a question of being able to answer very specific questions in the affirmative, basically “Is there any reasonable likelihood of this person ever being well, or at least not suffering a whole lot?” With physical diseases or disorders or problems, we usually have at least a guess as to the answer. Someone gets disorder X, they sicken, they suffer, they die. Moving up the “they die” to cut off a little of the “they suffer” makes a lot of sense for a lot of people. After all, the suffering is not in aid of anything. It’s just suffering.
But mental issues can look like they get disorder Y, they feel pretty bad, they feel somewhat better, they try a new drug, they don’t like the side effects but the symptoms were greatly relieved, they get worse, they try a new drug, they feel awful, they try a new drug, they get a new puppy, things look somewhat better for a few days, they feel worse again…
From the outside, it’s hard to know when it makes sense to just think things aren’t going to improve that much. From the inside, it might not matter too much because the goal is just to stop the pain.
For the record, I support the right to die. I consider quality of life a much more important measure than length of it. And I think it’s particularly nutty that we will kill people who want to live and keep alive those who want to die. But it’s harder with mental issues because we simply do not know as much. For me, that makes it even more imperative to give people choices, respect, compassion, and support.
From the point of view of being a family member of someone suffering long term depression, this chills me. Depression makes my family member act against her own best interests and she becomes reclusive, when social activity would help her state of mind; she becomes sedentary, when physical activity would have beneficial effects; she becomes untidy, when orderly surroundings would lift her mood; she becomes resistive to seeking medical attention, when both body and mind would do better if she sought the help she needs. I despair to think of how knowing euthanasia is an option would affect her when she’s in the grips of her illness. Her disordered thinking while depressed would prevent her seeking any other path. She would fixate on it as the only answer. Our battle as her loving family would shift from trying to give her the support and push she needs to seek the treatments that help her into fighting to save her life. Happiness is not an unattainable goal. She just thinks that it is when her depression is at its worst.
I’m trying to explain how practitioners could reasonably make a distinction between the two. You seem to be convinced that mental illness and physical illness are essentially the same, at least from some perspectives. I don’t necessarily disagree. But there are people who do, and for pretty understandable reasons (as noted quite succinctly above by the inestimable jsgoddess.)
Well the accounts I have heard of, the people whom I am defending in having the right to die and have assistance are people who have tried for years and years and years and had no success. My own situation sounds more like your sisters. I have had periods of ups and downs. But that is different than 17 straight years of nothing but severe depression. It is actually kind of hard for me to argue the point I am making, I realize the ramifications and - of course - any family or loved ones left behind will feel very badly. But still, 17 years of severe depression with no relief would be quite a burden to thik if living that way another 17 years.
I’ve posted this before, too many times it seems. I have been dealing with some form of depression or another for over 40 years. The last 20 have been with nearly continuous therapy & over 2 dozen different medications. It hasn’t helped.
On Easter, I attempted suicide, I was stopped. I spent the next 5 days in the psych ward of San Francisco General.
Every day is it’s own kind of misery. Some days are worst than others, but there are no good days, just less bad days. I am simple worn out.
So, yes, I’m in favor of assisted suicide for the mentally ill, with safeguards to make sure it’s not an impulsive thing.
By what conceivable right do you decide the most fundamental right of all - to die rather than suffer?
By what right?
It is not your life, you do not even know this person (quick- what language(s) does she speak? Where was she born?), have no claim whatsoever to her or her life.
But you get to say that she must suffer for another 50-60 years, even though she does not want to.
I hope you who set yourselves up as Gods die in intractable pain - after suffering it for 50 years.
NONE OF YOUR DAMNED BUSINESS.
(yes, I do consider suicide to be an inalienable (look it up) right)
Well, I hope everyone dies peacefully and painlessly after long, wonderful lives. I don’t think anyone in the thread has said anything to warrant suffering, not even 50 minutes’ or 50 seconds’ worth.
There are any number of aspects of life as to which society does not permit at least some people with mental illness to consent. In some circumstances, we may not enforce contracts against the mentally ill. We may deem that they cannot consent to sex. We may rule that they cannot be held liable for committing a crime.
Personally, I don’t have any idea where a line ought to be drawn as to when to permit, forbid, or facilitate suicide by people with mental illness, but it does not seem unusual to me that such a line is drawn somewhere.
I’m 100% in favor of the right to die. For some reason, probably religion, we have decided that every life is sacred, even to those who don’t want the life bestowed on them. Everybody should be able to die when they want, without offing themselves in some messy horrible way, there should be methods to do it, and Kevorkian should never have been penalized.
We don’t give our humans the rights we give to damn dogs. We actually treat dogs better!
It should be arranged that we can quietly, peacefully, say goodbye to our friends and families, set our affairs in order, and go gently into that good night. But no, we have to stay alive because someone else decrees we must.
I say this and I have never been depressed. But I want the right to die for myself, in case the day comes I want to. But people would rather have me go through whatever painful end of life procedures there are, perhaps suffering for years in pain and agony, because someone else has decreed my life is not my own.
Right to die, or choosing one’s manner of death, isn’t always a matter of avoiding extreme pain or whatever.
When my father was diagnosed with lung cancer he did his research and choose to forgo any treatment other than that required to keep him comfortable. His life, his choice. We’re not going to force him into anything, and we’d all prefer he die in his own bed at home. We did that for my mom, too, even though in both cases we’ve had some people press for us to “fight” the inevitable. We’ve at least progressed to the point where people can refuse treatment, a change from when my maternal grandmother died while crying and begging to be left alone and the doctors shoved the family away when they suggested that maybe the treatment wasn’t of benefit anymore. She was forced to endure medical procedures despite her refusal and that of her family and there wasn’t a damn thing to be done about it, that was horrific. At least we’ve moved past that.
Seems that in places where it is legal for docs to prescribe suicide pills patients don’t always actually use them - just having an out makes it more bearable to stick around for some people, at least for awhile. I think people like having options.
It’s certainly a complicated question, and part of it is past abuses and exterminations. As I said, there has to be a LOT of safeguards around the process.
Anyone capable of expressing an intention has the right to die. Period.
Folks other than that hypothetical person may find their participation requested, usually to provide an easier (e.g., physician-assisted) process, sometimes to do deeds that the individual can no longer perform directly for physical reasons, sometimes both.
I think everyone has a right to refrain from helping someone else die, or to constrain or limit their participation to specific circumstances.
I do not, however, think institutions should have the same absolute freedom. Policies putting some mild constraints (procedural, waiting interval, required pro forma counseling, etc) seem reasonable; policies restricting assistance to folks with incurable mortal illnesses (etc) on the other hand, strike me as inappropriate.