Next year's expansion of the criteria for medically assisted death will allow Canadians like Lisa Pauli, whose sole underlying condition is mental illness, the choice to die in this way.
As a mental health counselor, I’m very familiar with the wealth of psychological literature that documents how suicide attempts are overwhelmingly the product of impulses that occur in very short-lived moments of utter despair, and that most survivors of SAs regret making them.
However, I am also intimately familiar with how horrendously torturous life can be, even when one’s external circumstances aren’t that bad, and it is my firm belief that it should be an inalienable human right to “get off the ride” so to speak. To that end, I’m for governments providing suicide assistance to people who demonstrate a prolonged desire to end their own lives that cannot be reasonably argued to be an impulse due to temporarily depressed mood. There do need to be limitations to protect people from acting rashly or on deluded beliefs that stem from psychosis or mania (e.g. a schizophrenic person wanting to kill themselves because they believe they’re a host for the Devil as opposed to the much more rational reason of simply being sick of dealing with the illness itself), but overall I’m against requiring people to have a terminal illness or even just requiring them to get treatment for their depression. IMO, right to die should be universal, and restrictions on it should require strong arguments and support. You want to die because your weird religious beliefs deem it a sin to live past 30? Well…not my cup’o’tea, but that’s your right.
I also just kind of think making suicide illegal is stupid. Seriously suicidal people are going to kill themselves regardless of the law; all making it illegal does is force these folks to go about it via means that may be either ineffectual and self-harming and/or risk harming others.
I suppose you’re probably the best person to ask about this. Do you have a grasp on how much of the “people regret their failed SAs” phenomenon is due to the classic “I realized in that moment that life was worth living and I made a terrible decision” thought, versus things like being hospitalized (most likely including time in the psych ward) after the fact, long term consequences (which may include injuries, disfigurement, long term physical/cognitive/other problems, six figure hospital bills in the US, etc), shame about the whole matter which may include shame that “they couldn’t even do that right”, etc…?
If the government isn’t going to bother to help these people why force them to stay alive if they have really thought about it and would rather be dead? People kill themselves for a variety of reasons, at least in this case they tried to get help and can die peacefully instead of some of the other horrific methods desperate people end up using.
We should be expanding access to mental health treatment, fixing income inequality, stop fucking over disabled people, etc. But that’s obviously the opposite of what has been happening, and I agree with you… People should have the right to die if that’s what they really want given the situation they are in. And if that is genocide, that genocide has already been happening just in a much more brutal way. It’s not like someone who bothers to go through this process who gets rejected is just going to be like “oh well, the government said I can’t end my life guess I need to listen”
As a mental health counselor, I’m very familiar with the wealth of psychological literature that documents how suicide attempts are overwhelmingly the product of impulses that occur in very short-lived moments of utter despair, and that most survivors of SAs regret making them.
However, I am also intimately familiar with how horrendously torturous life can be, even when one’s external circumstances aren’t that bad, and it is my firm belief that it should be an inalienable human right to “get off the ride” so to speak. To that end, I’m for governments providing suicide assistance to people who demonstrate a prolonged desire to end their own lives that cannot be reasonably argued to be an impulse due to temporarily depressed mood. There do need to be limitations to protect people from acting rashly or on deluded beliefs that stem from psychosis or mania (e.g. a schizophrenic person wanting to kill themselves because they believe they’re a host for the Devil as opposed to the much more rational reason of simply being sick of dealing with the illness itself), but overall I’m against requiring people to have a terminal illness or even just requiring them to get treatment for their depression. IMO, right to die should be universal, and restrictions on it should require strong arguments and support. You want to die because your weird religious beliefs deem it a sin to live past 30? Well…not my cup’o’tea, but that’s your right.
I also just kind of think making suicide illegal is stupid. Seriously suicidal people are going to kill themselves regardless of the law; all making it illegal does is force these folks to go about it via means that may be either ineffectual and self-harming and/or risk harming others.
I suppose you’re probably the best person to ask about this. Do you have a grasp on how much of the “people regret their failed SAs” phenomenon is due to the classic “I realized in that moment that life was worth living and I made a terrible decision” thought, versus things like being hospitalized (most likely including time in the psych ward) after the fact, long term consequences (which may include injuries, disfigurement, long term physical/cognitive/other problems, six figure hospital bills in the US, etc), shame about the whole matter which may include shame that “they couldn’t even do that right”, etc…?
If the government isn’t going to bother to help these people why force them to stay alive if they have really thought about it and would rather be dead? People kill themselves for a variety of reasons, at least in this case they tried to get help and can die peacefully instead of some of the other horrific methods desperate people end up using.
We should be expanding access to mental health treatment, fixing income inequality, stop fucking over disabled people, etc. But that’s obviously the opposite of what has been happening, and I agree with you… People should have the right to die if that’s what they really want given the situation they are in. And if that is genocide, that genocide has already been happening just in a much more brutal way. It’s not like someone who bothers to go through this process who gets rejected is just going to be like “oh well, the government said I can’t end my life guess I need to listen”