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Is it "sinister" to help somebody with depression or other mental illness commit suicide?


Pong Messiah
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Looks like something "sinister" is going down in Europe:

Between October 2007 and December 2011, 100 people went to a clinic in Belgium’s Dutch-speaking region with depression, or schizophrenia, or, in several cases, Asperger’s syndrome, seeking euthanasia. The doctors, satisfied that 48 of the patients were in earnest, and that their conditions were “untreatable” and “unbearable,” offered them lethal injection; 35 went through with it.

I dunno, if somebody wants to end their life, helping them do it in an informed, quiet manner sure seems a lot less problematic than the muss and fuss of randomly finding their brains splattered against their bedroom wall.

 

Seems rather alarmist to me.

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To me, if the person has sought treatment and the treatment doesn't work, I don't see why it would be any different than a person with terminal cancer.

 

But for mental illness I think there would need to be some kind of checks and balances to ensure that this person has sought every possible avenue for treatment and nothing has worked. That way you don't get someone who comes in and says they want to die but never sought treatment and then along comes the family and sues the shit out of everyone.

 

Basically, I think it should be considered as a last resort.

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I think you need to be very careful when mental illness and depression are involved. While I feel that euthanasia can sometimes start on a slippery slope, I can understand it as an option for patients who are terminally ill and are facing a slow, painful death. But I think depression can be treated in a variety of ways. And Asperger's syndrome? Are you for real? From someone who has family members and co-workers on the autism spectrum, I understand that can be difficult to live with, but it is not a cause for euthanasia.

 

At the same time, if you're going to do it, I think lethal injection or some very potent oral medication is a much better way to go than jumping in front of someone's car. At least you're only hurting yourself and not making someone else responsible for your death.

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Err.. I dunno. I have strong feelings about this whole thing. Basically I don't think anyone has the right to prevent someone from ending their own life period. However determining whether that is truly what someone wants to do and they are making the decision with full cognition and awareness is tricky. In principal I fully support euthanasia and in particular the Dignitas clinic in Switzerland (I believe it's there).

 

Also, GGAB, no one who ever commits suicide does it as the first method of treatment. Killing yourself is by it's very nature the last resort. By the time you're at that stage pretty sure most options have been explored (at least mentally).

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As far as mental illness is concerned, antidepressants can induce "thoughts of suicide" as a side effect. As if they werent depressed enough. The meds raise the patient's seratonin levels (the same compound responsible for dreams in your subconscious), and basically tinker with brain chemistry in general. This kind of trivializes the patient's decision-making ability.

How can it be okay to help them kill themselves?

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Guest El Chalupacabra

I think you need to be very careful when mental illness and depression are involved. While I feel that euthanasia can sometimes start on a slippery slope, I can understand it as an option for patients who are terminally ill and are facing a slow, painful death. But I think depression can be treated in a variety of ways. And Asperger's syndrome? Are you for real? From someone who has family members and co-workers on the autism spectrum, I understand that can be difficult to live with, but it is not a cause for euthanasia.

 

At the same time, if you're going to do it, I think lethal injection or some very potent oral medication is a much better way to go than jumping in front of someone's car. At least you're only hurting yourself and not making someone else responsible for your death.

Well said. Personally, I believe that there should be allowances for terminally ill people to decide their own fate. Other people assisting them, eh, I think it really comes down to a case by case basis.

 

But when someone is mentally ill, yet able-bodied, I have a problem with anyone assisting with their suicide. If someone is hell-bent on committing suicide, they will find a way, and there is not a whole lot that can be done if they are determined to do it. But my instinct is to try to help that person as best as one can to get the treatment they need to not be suicidal, not assist in their own demise.

 

Likewise, if someone is going to commit suicide, if they are going to do it, they should not enlist the help of others, or worse, involve someone in killing them without their consent (IE jumping in front of a bus, suicide by cop, making a spectacle of their suicide before killing themselves in front of an audience,etc). Committing suicide in a way such as those is the ultimate in selfish decisions, except for maybe violent assaults or murder.

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As far as mental illness is concerned, antidepressants can induce "thoughts of suicide" as a side effect. As if they werent depressed enough. The meds raise the patient's seratonin levels (the same compound responsible for dreams in your subconscious), and basically tinker with brain chemistry in general. This kind of trivializes the patient's decision-making ability.

How can it be okay to help them kill themselves?

Anti depressants are not a cure or even treatment for depression/anxiety. They're more like anti-inflammatories for your mental states. They're designed to take the edge off everything, to make moods manageable so that discourse is possible and feelings of pain/sadness/anxiousness are not so acute that they are crippling.

 

I think anti-psychotics work differently, but again they're just there to try an make a level playing field.

 

In regards to how can it be okay to help someone kill themselves... What right do you (or anyone) have to tell someone they can't end their own life? Before we belong to anyone else, we belong to ourselves. Out lives are the only things that we are inherently supposed to have autonomy over. And getting to choose if one wants it to continue or not is a fundamental human right. (Or at least in my view it is). Of course if someone wishes to kill themselves the natural thing to do is to try and talk to them, seek alternative outcomes at all cost because there is no going back from this. But ultimately if they have made up their mind and have made the decision to end it to prevent them from doing so is the crime.

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There's a difference between keeping someone from doing something and assisting them.

 

I mean, I'm not doing anything to stop Pong from pooping in my cubicle, but I'm also not going to invite him in and hand him some toilet paper.

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