No, we need to acknowledge that mentally ill people who attempt suicide are not making a rational decision, and should be helped, not left to die.
But that is false.
The true statement is that some people who try to commit suicide are mentally ill and should lose their rights because their capacity is impaired and should be treated against their will. Others are exercising their rights because they do have capacity and retain the right to their own autonomy.
That is not my opinion but a statement of fact in many jurisdictions. I happen to concur.
Do you believe that every person who attempts suicide should be detained and treated under the mental health act because that is most certainly not the case.
Not necessarily detained, no, but unless they’re terminally ill then they should be treated. There’s no other rational reason for suicide.
If people followed your guidelines, I’d be dead. I’m rather glad they didn’t.
You are entitled to your opinion, but you are not entitled to claim that facts are not facts. The vast majority of self harm referrals are not detained for treatment in the full knowledge that a risk of immediate repeat is possible or even probable.
First the medical professional determines whether or not mental illness is present. If not then treatment must be voluntary. Self harm behaviour is not necessarily an indication of mental illness.
Second the medical professional will decide whether detention is possible or necessary. In the vast majority of cases, immediate discharge is the appropriate outcome.
Those are facts backed up by professional guidelines and the law.
Your beliefs may differ.
Someone who self harms, or attempts suicide, should be presumed to be mentally ill, and therefore presumed to require treatment and protection.
Why are you supporting policies that allow mentally ill people to come to preventable harm or death?
Oh, and your “facts” are wrong. Hospitals don’t routinely leave people to die because of mental illness. If you taught your students that they should, you have blood on your hands.
That is not what I said. Try to read what is written rather than what you mistakenly believe to be written.
I have spent more hours than I care to remember doing mental health assessments on people who have attempted self harm. I can assure you that what I say is in compliance with the law and professional ethics.
That is your belief to which you are entitled. It happens to be a false belief as it does not reflect the law or medical practice.
There is a difference between what you may believe and what is in fact the case.
The majority of people assessed for self harm are not detained, nor aggressively followed up. This is because they are assessed to be acting within normal limits of sane behaviour and to be neither psychotic nor severely depressed. Some self harm certainly does involve major mental illness and this is followed up by detention and treatment; the great majority does not.
And what are you doing to get those laws and “ethics” changed so that you’re allowed to treat vulnerable mentally ill people? Or are you happy to sit back and watch them die?
We are allowed to treat vulnerable mentally ill patients against their will if they are considered sufficiently mentally disordered and treatable. Many suicide attempts are made by people who do not meet these criteria and hence are neither detained, nor treated if they do not wish to be treated. Those that are considered treatable and without capacity may be treated against their will.
Once again, an act of attempted suicide alone is not diagnostic of mental disorder, nor necessarily a reason to judge a person as lacking in capacity.
Your belief differs and you wish to change it. My belief is reflected in the legal and ethical position taken by the professional bodies and I agree with it. I do not slavishly follow such guidelines in belief, but do so after close consideration of the philosophical grounding of the arguments a our autonomy and coercion.
In other matters (voluntary euthanasia, abortion, imprisonment as retribution, responsibility) I disagree with the current legal and ethical position (although each year it more closely approaches my beliefs about what should be.) I do not claim that such views that are divergent to mine are wrong as they are correct in law and professional ethics. I do have the right to argue for change, but comply with the law and professional ethics in the meantime, recognising that they are at least as important as my beliefs.
So, you’re happy to sit back and let vulnerable mentally ill patients die if you don’t consider them sufficiently mentally ill? Lovely…
It depends what you mean by mentally ill. Do you agree that it is possible to have the desire to kill oneself and to act on it without being either mentally impaired or disordered?
It seems that this is your problem- you cannot comprehend that suicidal intent and action are not coterminous with illness and competence states. In the medical and legal world, people who have acted to harm themselves or intend to do so mat be assessed according to three independent criteria- mental disorder, treatability, and capacity. These three different categories overlap but have areas that only include one or two of those concepts. Thus it is possible to be:
Mentally disordered but still competent
Mentally disordered but not treatable
Not mentally disorder and competent yet suicidal
Etc.
Only if one is terminally ill, and will have zero quality of life from that point on if one remains alive.
Please explain to me how someone can reasonably want to kill themselves in any other circumstance.
Again, that is your view but it is at total variance with Professional ethics and the law. You persistently mistake your personal belief system for ‘what is the case’.
Suicide is legal. Suicidal thoughts are not necessarily an indication of mental disorder.
Recently the interpretation of the law on assisted suicide has moved slowly towards decriminalisation.
The law now recognises a living will indicating a definite withdrawal of consent for treatment on suicide as commanding.
The law over hunger strikes to death by prisoners in the UK shows that autonomy is recognised in suicidal acts as prisoners are allowed to kill themselves by starvation. Other means of suicide are mandated against and people are sent for medical treatment according to a duty of care, but hunger strikes are seen as not involving a failure of duty to care.
No, I don’t. You persistently mistake your false interpretation of the law and ethics foe “what is the case”.
Stop claiming that it’s legal, let alone mandated, for medical staff to refuse treatment to vulnerable mentally ill people, and stop claiming that it’s simply a “belief” that attempting suicide is in almost all cases a signifier of mental illness. Because you are factually wrong.
Sane people, excluding the terminally ill who have no chance of any remaining quality of life, do not try to kill themselves. You have yet to suggest any situation contrary to that. The only one that I can think of is someone being imprisoned and tortured with no hope of rescue, but that’s not happening in this country.
At least you acknowledge that there’s a duty to treat suicide attempts here. It’s about fucking time.
Cite? I’ve known a couple of sane, rational people who have opted for suicide due to their circumstances.
No, you haven’t. If they attempted suicide because of any circumstances other than (literal) torment that would only end in death, it was neither sane nor rational. So, the terminally ill or those being imprisoned and tortured.
As many times before you are wrong and incorrigible.
If only you would attempt to understand the world rather than try to force it to accord your belief system, then you might have a chance of understanding what is actually the case.
As before I am going to bail out now as you do not listen to rational argument or accept cites.