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Source: (consider it)
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Thread: care for the mentally ill
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Avila
Shipmate
# 15541
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Posted
Trying to get my head around this.
Mental illness can be terminal - by suicide etc. But I would not consider myself to be in 'my right mind' in the depths of the depression, and would not expect to be considered medically competent to request enthanasia.
There again if I felt that bad I can't imagine going to request it but getting on with the job myself.
I understood the enthansia debate to be about allowing assistance to those who are beyond the means of unassisted suicide.
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http://aweebleswonderings.blogspot.com/
Posts: 1305 | From: west midlands | Registered: Mar 2010
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Mere Nick
Shipmate
# 11827
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Posted
I have clinical depression and my doctor says I'll deal with until I assume room temperature. No need to be be put down like a suffering dog, not with a year's supply of happy pills costing just $40 a year at Walmart.
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"Well that's it, boys. I've been redeemed. The preacher's done warshed away all my sins and transgressions. It's the straight and narrow from here on out, and heaven everlasting's my reward."
Delmar O'Donnell
Posts: 2797 | From: West Carolina | Registered: Sep 2006
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Avila
Shipmate
# 15541
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Posted
I don't know about the opener but this case seems well attested
Deaf twins sought euthansia as going blind
The fact that it was performed due to psychological stress of what might happen in the future with expected blindness lends credance to the mentally ill case in the opener. However the fact that they had to hunt for 2 years to find a place that would do it given no terminal condition was involved suggests that the checks and balances still lean against it.
If it can be done in Belguim then why don't we hear of people going there as we do with the Swiss clinic? Do they have rules to prevent death tourism?
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http://aweebleswonderings.blogspot.com/
Posts: 1305 | From: west midlands | Registered: Mar 2010
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quetzalcoatl
Shipmate
# 16740
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Posted
These issues always come up in debates, since if you express concern over 'mission creep', you are told that this is the slippery slope fallacy. But in fact, if the OP is correct, the slippery slope does happen. It starts off as euthanasia for those in unbearable pain, and ends up with depression and so on. The story in the OP sounds bizarre to me, but time will tell if it's correct.
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I can't talk to you today; I talked to two people yesterday.
Posts: 9878 | From: UK | Registered: Oct 2011
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Zach82
Shipmate
# 3208
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Posted
The pleasantly named "Death with dignity" referendum in Massachusetts was very narrowly defeated last year mostly because it offered absolutely no support to those seeking suicide. The rich would be able to afford palliative care, the poor could afford to die. Victims of disabling accidents would have had no one telling them there is life with disability. The mentally ill would have access to suicide but not therapy. Naturally, the idea that there was something morally wrong with suicide even when chosen freely, wasn't really part of the debate.
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Don't give up yet, no, don't ever quit/ There's always a chance of a critical hit. Ghost Mice
Posts: 9148 | From: Boston, MA | Registered: Aug 2002
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Arethosemyfeet
Shipmate
# 17047
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Zach82:
Naturally, the idea that there was something morally wrong with suicide even when chosen freely, wasn't really part of the debate.
Nor should it be. Personal morality should not be regulated by law. The law is there to regulate how people deal with each other.
Posts: 2933 | From: Hebrides | Registered: Apr 2012
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JoannaP
Shipmate
# 4493
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Gwai:
I don't think I understand why said twins needed help dying.
Nor the woman in the article Josephine linked to. Why couldn't she just commit suicide herself if she wanted to, without getting a doctor to kill her?
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"Freedom for the pike is death for the minnow." R. H. Tawney (quoted by Isaiah Berlin)
"Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety." Benjamin Franklin
Posts: 1877 | From: England | Registered: May 2003
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Zach82
Shipmate
# 3208
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Arethosemyfeet:
quote:
Originally posted by Zach82:
Naturally, the idea that there was something morally wrong with suicide even when chosen freely, wasn't really part of the debate.
Nor should it be. Personal morality should not be regulated by law. The law is there to regulate how people deal with each other.
Physician assisted suicide IS people dealing with each other.
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Don't give up yet, no, don't ever quit/ There's always a chance of a critical hit. Ghost Mice
Posts: 9148 | From: Boston, MA | Registered: Aug 2002
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Arethosemyfeet
Shipmate
# 17047
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Zach82:
quote:
Originally posted by Arethosemyfeet:
quote:
Originally posted by Zach82:
Naturally, the idea that there was something morally wrong with suicide even when chosen freely, wasn't really part of the debate.
Nor should it be. Personal morality should not be regulated by law. The law is there to regulate how people deal with each other.
Physician assisted suicide IS people dealing with each other.
True, but you specified suicide. I'm guessing if it's the assistance you have an issue with then you consider it murder, rather than suicide. Even so, I don't consider the decisions of two consenting adults to be the business of the state either, so long as both are of sound mind.
Posts: 2933 | From: Hebrides | Registered: Apr 2012
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Zach82
Shipmate
# 3208
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Arethosemyfeet:
True, but you specified suicide. I'm guessing if it's the assistance you have an issue with then you consider it murder, rather than suicide. Even so, I don't consider the decisions of two consenting adults to be the business of the state either, so long as both are of sound mind.
So the argument went.
[ 05. February 2013, 20:25: Message edited by: Zach82 ]
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Don't give up yet, no, don't ever quit/ There's always a chance of a critical hit. Ghost Mice
Posts: 9148 | From: Boston, MA | Registered: Aug 2002
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claret10
Ship's Paranoid Android
# 16341
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Posted
I guess for a suicidal person it's making the safe decision of how to go. Attempting to take your own life and failing is incredibly demoralising, especially if you damage your body in the process. It is still about being allowed to die with dignity and ensuring it happens in a way that is least damaging to others.
Not that i'm necessarily saying it's a good idea.However many of the criteria such as quality of life that get refered to in physical illnesses are also present for different reasons in mental illness.
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Just when you think life can't possibly get any worse it suddenly does
Posts: 137 | From: Somewhere, nowhere, anywhere | Registered: Apr 2011
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no prophet's flag is set so...
Proceed to see sea
# 15560
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Posted
We in Canada have experienced general de-insuring of mental health, except as offered in crisis for brief periods (certainly less than 2 weeks, usually 2-4 days) within hospitals.
What is seldom or available in a rationed type of way is psychotherapy, social work assistance to the family to cope, and mental health community nursing. What is readily available is arrest, appearance in front of a judge who will sentence the person to a jail where no care other than tranquillizing drugs are available.
I kind of 'get' where the OP is going with this. The mentally ill would be more cheaply dealt with if they'd only just go off and die. Them, the elderly and the poor.
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Out of this nettle, danger, we pluck this flower, safety.
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Posts: 11498 | From: Treaty 6 territory in the nonexistant Province of Buffalo, Canada ↄ⃝' | Registered: Mar 2010
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Arethosemyfeet
Shipmate
# 17047
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Zach82:
So the argument went.
So what does suicide being immoral have to do with whether it should be legal? I don't think I get to decide when I die, nor do I think I have the right to kill someone else who wants to die. I also don't think I have the right to make that decision for others.
Posts: 2933 | From: Hebrides | Registered: Apr 2012
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Soror Magna
Shipmate
# 9881
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Posted
If the author had no contact with his mother for two years, and no contact with her doctors before her death, how does he know she didn't have cancer, for example? ISTM he's assuming that she requested euthanasia because she was depressed and not for any other reason.
I also noticed that the author is from Leuven University, which, IIRC, is a Catholic institution, but his mother was treated at the Free University of Brussels, which sounds like it isn't Catholic. Is there any significance to this?
I have to also confess that I wonder how someone who now writes "my life has changed considerably" and "The death of my mother has triggered a lot of questions" was totes ok not seeing her for two years when she was sick. There are many, many people - some in perfect health - who have damn good reasons for not wanting contact with certain family members. Maybe she cut him off because he kept telling her she was depressed because her faith wasn't strong enough. We've heard that plenty of times, haven't we?
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"You come with me to room 1013 over at the hospital, I'll show you America. Terminal, crazy and mean." -- Tony Kushner, "Angels in America"
Posts: 5430 | From: Caprica City | Registered: Jul 2005
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Zach82
Shipmate
# 3208
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Posted
quote:
So what does suicide being immoral have to do with whether it should be legal? I don't think I get to decide when I die, nor do I think I have the right to kill someone else who wants to die. I also don't think I have the right to make that decision for others.
We're having this debate?
Maybe I just get all black-and-white when it comes to murdering people. On top of that, it doesn't seem to me that killing oneself is that terribly difficult an undertaking for one sufficiently determined, so I can see no reason to bring a doctor into matters. But I'm known for being an all-dead-inside, unfeeling bastard, so what do I know?
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Don't give up yet, no, don't ever quit/ There's always a chance of a critical hit. Ghost Mice
Posts: 9148 | From: Boston, MA | Registered: Aug 2002
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Bostonman
Shipmate
# 17108
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Posted
Someone very close to me is mentally ill along the lines discussed in the first paragraph of the article. By the grace of God she has never been suicidal or gotten into particularly threatening self-harm. But the notion that she could legally consent to be euthanized or not is horrifying, just horrifying ti me. When you've talked with someone who is in real and utter despair over and over and over you can begin to imagine this actually happening and it's simply terrifying.
Another friend, who was suicidal, never actually followed through with the knife she was literally holding to her own throat because she couldn't get up the courage. It doesn't need to be easier.
Posts: 424 | From: USA | Registered: May 2012
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Zach82
Shipmate
# 3208
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Posted
Amen, Bostonman.
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Don't give up yet, no, don't ever quit/ There's always a chance of a critical hit. Ghost Mice
Posts: 9148 | From: Boston, MA | Registered: Aug 2002
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churchgeek
Have candles, will pray
# 5557
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by claret10:
I guess for a suicidal person it's making the safe decision of how to go. Attempting to take your own life and failing is incredibly demoralising, especially if you damage your body in the process. It is still about being allowed to die with dignity and ensuring it happens in a way that is least damaging to others.
Not that i'm necessarily saying it's a good idea.However many of the criteria such as quality of life that get refered to in physical illnesses are also present for different reasons in mental illness.
I think this is a good reason for assisted suicide - the dignity aspect, not to mention making it a LOT easier on all involved (except, perhaps, for the costs incurred). In any other suicide, someone unsuspecting often finds the body, which may or may not be in pieces/bloody from a knife or gun, or in some other horrifying appearance as with hanging or an overdose. At least in the hospital, it would be less painful to the person dying, and less traumatizing for family or friends.
That's not to say I'm in favor of assisted suicide becoming widely available. I imagine there are some cases where it makes good sense, but in general, wanting to die is a sign of mental/emotional pathology and should be treated as such, IMO.
That said, calling suicide "immoral" is completely unhelpful. When I was chronically suicidal, the belief that if I did it, God would send me to hell might have been what kept me from any sure-fire attempts, but it also kept me much more miserable than I already was. And the judgmentalism of people like my youth pastor, who said suicide is the ultimate selfishness, only heightened the guilt and self-hatred my illness caused. It was only when I struggled through to the realization that if I succumbed to suicide, I would awake in God's loving embrace, that I found I really wanted to live.
Calling it "immoral," whether or not you attach a hell-sentence to it, increases depression in suicidal persons and increases the sense of shame and guilt felt by survivors when a suicide happens. In fact, when you're suicidal, your brain generally isn't functioning right - that organ you make (moral as well as all other) decisions with anyway, you know.
Which speaks to the OP and the question at hand. Why would someone be provided with physician-assisted suicide as a "cure" or "treatment" for the very disease that's making them want to die? If they have no terminal illness (other than depression, which isn't terminal, but can be fatal), why wouldn't you treat the symptoms of depression? To euthanize in this case would be like "curing" my eczema by burning my skin off. Or by killing me.
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I reserve the right to change my mind.
My article on the Virgin of Vladimir
Posts: 7773 | From: Detroit | Registered: Feb 2004
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Zach82
Shipmate
# 3208
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Posted
quote:
I think this is a good reason for assisted suicide - the dignity aspect
Let's not forget the dignity of being alive, as pleasant as the thought of my festering juices leeching into the ground water might be.
quote:
...not to mention making it a LOT easier on all involved (except, perhaps, for the costs incurred).
I always thought the line between "I don't want to be a burden" and "You are a burden" was distressingly vague.
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Don't give up yet, no, don't ever quit/ There's always a chance of a critical hit. Ghost Mice
Posts: 9148 | From: Boston, MA | Registered: Aug 2002
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churchgeek
Have candles, will pray
# 5557
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Zach82:
quote:
I think this is a good reason for assisted suicide - the dignity aspect
Let's not forget the dignity of being alive, as pleasant as the thought of my festering juices leeching into the ground water might be.
quote:
...not to mention making it a LOT easier on all involved (except, perhaps, for the costs incurred).
I always thought the line between "I don't want to be a burden" and "You are a burden" was distressingly vague.
If you continue reading that paragraph, I sort of explain what I mean by "dignity." I personally vote for the dignity of being alive. But if someone's going to kill themselves, there's more dignity to it happening in a hospital. [eta: There can be all kinds of reasons someone might opt for euthanasia/assisted suicide that I'm not able to fully imagine. I'm not interested in making an all-or-nothing statement of what should be done in every single case. It's not my place to do so.]
Now, once they're in the hospital, maybe it's better to treat underlying causes of why they want to die - especially if mental illness or depression caused by a physical illness or other situation is involved.
IOW, I'm not saying, "YAY, ASSISTED SUICIDE!" I'm working with nuances here.
[ 06. February 2013, 00:50: Message edited by: churchgeek ]
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I reserve the right to change my mind.
My article on the Virgin of Vladimir
Posts: 7773 | From: Detroit | Registered: Feb 2004
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Zach82
Shipmate
# 3208
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Posted
quote:
I'm working with nuances here.
And I fully admit I am incapable of seeing any with this particular matter.
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Don't give up yet, no, don't ever quit/ There's always a chance of a critical hit. Ghost Mice
Posts: 9148 | From: Boston, MA | Registered: Aug 2002
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PaulBC
Shipmate
# 13712
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Josephine:
It appears that, in Belgium (if this article is to be believed), euthanasia may be considered a free choice for the mentally ill.
That seems problematic in oh so many ways.
This gentlepeople is where the Nazis started with the infirm, the mentally disabled, the physically disabled and so. We must remember where that led to , Auschwitz, Sobior , and other camps.
I believe people of all faiths and of no faith need to recall this page of history and fight the urge to eliminate people who need help or are just different. ![[Angel]](graemlins/angel.gif) ![[Smile]](smile.gif) ![[Votive]](graemlins/votive.gif)
[ 06. February 2013, 02:53: Message edited by: PaulBC ]
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"He has told you O mortal,what is good;and what does the Lord require of youbut to do justice and to love kindness ,and to walk humbly with your God."Micah 6:8
Posts: 873 | From: Victoria B.C. Canada | Registered: May 2008
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Ricardus
Shipmate
# 8757
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Zach82:
On top of that, it doesn't seem to me that killing oneself is that terribly difficult an undertaking for one sufficiently determined, so I can see no reason to bring a doctor into matters.
My understanding is that it's quite hard to kill yourself in a way that doesn't entail a significant risk of either a.) severe pain or b.) ending up alive but paralysed and/or with multiple organ failure.
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Then the dog ran before, and coming as if he had brought the news, shewed his joy by his fawning and wagging his tail. -- Tobit 11:9 (Douai-Rheims)
Posts: 7247 | From: Liverpool, UK | Registered: Nov 2004
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North East Quine
Curious beastie
# 13049
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by claret10:
I guess for a suicidal person it's making the safe decision of how to go. Attempting to take your own life and failing is incredibly demoralising, especially if you damage your body in the process. It is still about being allowed to die with dignity and ensuring it happens in a way that is least damaging to others.
Someone very close and dear to me attempted suicide many years ago, and failed. She had struggled with her mental health for years. She was very distressed to find herself still alive. She is permanently disfigured and slightly disabled as a result. BUT her life has been completely transformed since then, partly with medication, partly with a change in her toxic situation.
I would be horrified to think that someone like her could be offered euthanasia.
Posts: 6414 | From: North East Scotland | Registered: Oct 2007
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Moo
Ship's tough old bird
# 107
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Posted
I am concerned about the effect that physician-assisted suicide would have on the doctor. I know that many doctors would refuse to do it.
Frankly, I would rather not be treated by a doctor who is willing to kill someone, even at their own request.
Moo
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Kerygmania host
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See you later, alligator.
Posts: 20365 | From: Alleghany Mountains of Virginia | Registered: May 2001
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Avila
Shipmate
# 15541
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Posted
Surely regardless of all other moral and legal arguments the person requesting euthansia needs to be of sound mind and mentally competent to make the decision.
By definition mental illness/ distress etc whether biochemically or pyschologically gives a distorted view of the world. At times I wouldn't be competent to decide what to have for dinner, such that it is easier to skip a meal than face a decision.
If suicidal ideation is a symptom of the depression etc then how can any doctor determine whether the person is expressing a competent decision of exhibiting a classic symptom of their illness?
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http://aweebleswonderings.blogspot.com/
Posts: 1305 | From: west midlands | Registered: Mar 2010
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Josephine
Orthodox Belle
# 3899
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Avila:
If suicidal ideation is a symptom of the depression etc then how can any doctor determine whether the person is expressing a competent decision of exhibiting a classic symptom of their illness?
I would have to assume that, if the person is depressed, they can't. So, regardless of how anyone feels about the value of self-determination in the face of death, of death with dignity, and all that, euthanasia (or assisted suicide) for someone who is depressed should simply not be permitted.
Caring for people with chronic illness (whether mental or physical), for the elderly, for the disabled, can be difficult and expensive. But if you've drunk from Ayn Rand's well, it must be hard to see them as anything but "takers" and "parasites."
But our willingness to take care of the "takers" is a large part of what makes us human. To do otherwise is, or should be, unthinkable.
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I've written a book! Catherine's Pascha: A celebration of Easter in the Orthodox Church. It's a lovely book for children. Take a look!
Posts: 10273 | From: Pacific Northwest, USA | Registered: Jan 2003
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