Assisted Suicide for Mentally Ill

[JohniJones]

I think this service should be available to those with mental illness. I am not talking about acute depression - I am talking about psychotic disorders and other disorders which have been unsuccessfully treated with therapy and medication. Schizophrenia is a disease of the brain just like any other disease and should be treated as terminal in some cases. In my personal experiences I have lost family members, friends, acquaintances, job opportunities, but most of all I have missed out on the joys of life itself, of having friends and experiences and special moments, of experiencing the dignity of being a human being. I have tried to help myself in various ways through medication and therapy all of which have been unsuccessful. Throughout my late twenties I have been routinely mocked, scorned, spit on, harassed, told I am a reject, freak, a sick person. I have never harmed anyone or ever gotten in trouble with the law. No one has ever understood what was wrong with me except for maybe one psychiatrist I have met. No one has ever attempted to understand.

Because of the state I am in I believe it is my right to end my life in a dignified manner. I know there are currently laws in existing areas where assisted suicide is legal for persons with terminal illnesses such as cancer. But there seems to be an agenda where people believe those suffering with mental illness don't have the right to this type of service, as if we are sub-human. A life living with this type of disorder is not a life at all, it is a life outside life in which you are peering in but never get the chance to live it. It's a life of frustration and humiliation. I know in many cases that people with these disorders can change and still want to live. But there are others that can't and I think they should have the right to die.

I would like to write entire pages of the carnage I have suffered, but I know most would not read for the shear length of it. I will briefly summarize my ordeal. I am a 28 year old male that has a university degree in Computer Science. After numerous job losses due to psychotic episodes I am now living alone collecting a social security check to get by. I have been hospitalized numerous times before and have spent most of life living alone or in my parents basement. I barely leave my room. I sit in a bedroom nearly all day because I suffer from paranoid features, manic depression, and delusional thoughts. I have tried several anti-psychotic medications and therapy. I was benefiting positively from drugs at one time but unfortunately I started to develop horrible side effects which were intolerable to the point where I could no longer function. Over the course of time I have gradually gotten worse and most people have given up on me. To me this is an incurable terminal state and is no different than cancer. In fact I would trade cancer over this disease for the chance to be a normal person if at least for a short while.

Encouraging the killing of people with mental illnesses only promotes the idea of mental illness, and endorses the ethics and beliefs of those held in the grip of psychiatry.

"Disorder" is a pejorative term that discourages any view or procedure that de-pathologises human behaviour.

There are no disorders. There are techniques available that show that any behaviour or experience is an aspect of human normality. E.g. so-called psychotic depression is easily tackled by techniques and by a social inclusivity that psychiatry has for years held in disdain.

What you are promoting is the moral terminus of a dangerously narrow, pathologised view of human nature. You have no right to justify the claim you make about any "psychiatric condition/illness" you fall under, except as an arbitary lifestyle and belief choice.

[chaz wyman]

I think this service should be available to those with mental illness. I am not talking about acute depression - I am talking about psychotic disorders and other disorders which have been unsuccessfully treated with therapy and medication. Schizophrenia is a disease of the brain just like any other disease and should be treated as terminal in some cases. In my personal experiences I have lost family members, friends, acquaintances, job opportunities, but most of all I have missed out on the joys of life itself, of having friends and experiences and special moments, of experiencing the dignity of being a human being. I have tried to help myself in various ways through medication and therapy all of which have been unsuccessful. Throughout my late twenties I have been routinely mocked, scorned, spit on, harassed, told I am a reject, freak, a sick person. I have never harmed anyone or ever gotten in trouble with the law. No one has ever understood what was wrong with me except for maybe one psychiatrist I have met. No one has ever attempted to understand.

Because of the state I am in I believe it is my right to end my life in a dignified manner. I know there are currently laws in existing areas where assisted suicide is legal for persons with terminal illnesses such as cancer. But there seems to be an agenda where people believe those suffering with mental illness don't have the right to this type of service, as if we are sub-human. A life living with this type of disorder is not a life at all, it is a life outside life in which you are peering in but never get the chance to live it. It's a life of frustration and humiliation. I know in many cases that people with these disorders can change and still want to live. But there are others that can't and I think they should have the right to die.

I would like to write entire pages of the carnage I have suffered, but I know most would not read for the shear length of it. I will briefly summarize my ordeal. I am a 28 year old male that has a university degree in Computer Science. After numerous job losses due to psychotic episodes I am now living alone collecting a social security check to get by. I have been hospitalized numerous times before and have spent most of life living alone or in my parents basement. I barely leave my room. I sit in a bedroom nearly all day because I suffer from paranoid features, manic depression, and delusional thoughts. I have tried several anti-psychotic medications and therapy. I was benefiting positively from drugs at one time but unfortunately I started to develop horrible side effects which were intolerable to the point where I could no longer function. Over the course of time I have gradually gotten worse and most people have given up on me. To me this is an incurable terminal state and is no different than cancer. In fact I would trade cancer over this disease for the chance to be a normal person if at least for a short while.

Encouraging the killing of people with mental illnesses only promotes the idea of mental illness, and endorses the ethics and beliefs of those held in the grip of psychiatry.

"Disorder" is a pejorative term that discourages any view or procedure that de-pathologises human behaviour.

There are no disorders. There are techniques available that show that any behaviour or experience is an aspect of human normality. E.g. so-called psychotic depression is easily tackled by techniques and by a social inclusivity that psychiatry has for years held in disdain.

What you are promoting is the moral terminus of a dangerously narrow, pathologised view of human nature. You have no right to justify the claim you make about any "psychiatric condition/illness" you fall under, except as an arbitary lifestyle and belief choice.

Your view tends towards a commonly held view that normality is a social construction, and that all mental illness is nothing more than behaviour that steps outside the definition of what is considered normal. As such you express a view consistent with the sort of psychiatric and psychological revisionisms of the late 1960s and 1970s, which have become the bread and butter knee jerk response to all forms of mental illness awareness from several counter elements within and without the practise of mental health. Some of this revisionism has been of great use: we no longer send unmarried pregnant, or 'wilful' girls away to mental institutions, as we did in the early 20thC, and in most places there is a tendency to restrict some of the most draconian "cures" such as electro-shock (ahem) "therapy", to voluntary cases.

However , the basic thought that mental disease is socially constructed, and that we are somehow in the grip of psychiatric science, can be applied with equal force to all illness. As all illnesses are natural, we might suggest that a broken leg or a bleeding artery is not really illness, but outside the defined norms of human normality, and is defined as a pathology. Clearly such an approach would not help a person walk. So having a broken leg is not a 'disorder' - the person with the broken leg has the right to have that pain and be crippled if he so chooses.

I once held the view that the borders of 'normal' are too narrowly defined, until my brother went insane. It was then that the revisionism of the 1970 became not a solution but a severe problem. It was employed by politics ion the 1980s to stop spending so much help on mental health by closing down all the mental health institutions. The result of this is that there was precious little help for my brother and he suffered undiagnosed for over a decade, whilst the murder rate from mentally ill patients now walking the streets has increased dramatically.

So whilst I agree that the boundaries of what is 'normal' are speculative and contingent on the vicissitudes of politically charged and financially interested parties, and takes in considerations from morality and the unfortunate personal mentalities of law and policy makers; nonetheless insanity is real.

What ever way you use to describe my brother's 'condition', before the diagnosis he was incapable of living any sort of a thing that you might want to cal 'a life', and after his diagnosis he received some semblance of normality, but it was not until about 8 years ago that the new generation of anti-psychotic drugs become available that he was able to act independently. He was in a virtual hell for 25 years, now he can do stuff for himself. His transformation is due utterly to the drugs that keep him going. If he stops taking them, then he will be back 'inside' screaming incoherent gibberish at the wall, as he did for the first 10 years of his 'condition'.

There are material causes for mental health problems, and gradually we are finding ways to cause those problems to be alleviated.

[chaz wyman]

The increasingly common consequences of "care in the community"

http://beta.uk.news.yahoo.com/british-w ... 18045.html

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/u ... 658445.ece

[HexHammer]

Unlike cancer mental illnesses are harder to "messure" and see in a physical sense, contrary cancer. Cancer are directly observational and in a sense more messurable.

I belive the common western ethical understanding are kinda phobic because of past tragic horrific medical mistakes, where passing mental illnesses wasn't distinced from more serious incureable mental illnesses.

Our ethics seems to be severly outdated, and we should focus on the right to "life quality", and if we don't have that, we should have the right to be assisted to relief.

[malpka17]

I totally agree with stix. I'm also being bipolar, and I don't understand why do we always people with mental illness have to be discriminated, and nobody cares with our right to choose. My disease even made me unable to finish my studies and get diploma. Why do we have to die in shame of suicide - over rooftop, uncertain drug overdose. Doesn't we have a right to die with dignity and peace. I mean nobody respects our rights to choose. All our lives we must hide, avoid people because of our disease. And our mental disorder is permanent. Our social stigmatization is permanent.
Due to crisis soon we will not have enough money to take even money from rents.
So why we are discriminated all our lives. It's not our fault that we were born this way.

[smmeth]

I agree I suffer from mental illness and have tried several times. I wish there was a place I could go and free myself from this but there isn't. Instead people have to overdose on drugs or attempt slitting their wrists or hurting other people or pretending to be dangerous so cops will do it for us. They put us in dirty hospitals that double as prisons. It's fucking hopeless I have my heart out for anyone else who doesn't want to be here but has no way out.

[chaz wyman]

This whole argument is complete rubbish from beginning to end.
The only time the issue is "assisted suicide" is even relevant is when a person becomes too PHYSICALLY incapable of ending his or her own life.

Stuff about discrimination and measuring how bad a mental illness is, is of no consequence at all.

For all able bodied persons, and for most people (99%) with some physical impairment, suicide is easy and painless.
There are several methods that can be accomplished without any assistance, and with no pain whatever.

I think the only problem is that some individuals seem to need permission to live their lives, and thus need permission to end their lives.
Well here it is. Your live is your own, no one can tell you that you have to live it, or have to end it. The choice is yours.

http://www.thecalmzone.net/help/issues/ ... tAodMUgAnA

This is the easiest answer, I am told. Though I would not recommend it to anyone.


http://www.amazon.co.uk/s/?ie=UTF8&keyw ... oh1t0m9x_e

[chaz wyman]

I agree I suffer from mental illness and have tried several times. I wish there was a place I could go and free myself from this but there isn't. Instead people have to overdose on drugs or attempt slitting their wrists or hurting other people or pretending to be dangerous so cops will do it for us. They put us in dirty hospitals that double as prisons. It's fucking hopeless I have my heart out for anyone else who doesn't want to be here but has no way out.

You are not making sense. Suicide is the easiest thing. I just think you don't want to die at all.
Twenty minutes of research is all you need to do a good job.

http://exiteuthanasia.wordpress.com/rat ... r-methods/

[reasonvemotion]

Threats of suicide, should always be taken seriously.

People want help. They want talk to someone. Isolation is paralysing. Hopelessness sets in and reason gets lost in a person's blind panic.

Your anxieties need to be addressed.

Never ignored.

[chaz wyman]

Threats of suicide, should always be taken seriously.

People want help. They want talk to someone. Isolation is paralysing. Hopelessness sets in and reason gets lost in a person's blind panic.

Your anxieties need to be addressed.

Never ignored.

What do you mean "threat". If a person claims they want to die, then that is their decision. If it is a bluff, then it is best to call that bluff. You have to really mean it, to go through with it. ~Every instinct tells you to live.

Once the bluff has been called, and the person still ives then something reasonable and progressive can be done to help them and consider why they pretended to want to die.

As for hopelessness, that is the natural condition of a species that is doomed to die. It is not an unreasonable position to take, this is not about loss of reason at all. There is angst in the world for good reasons.

I was listening to Daniel Barenboim talking to Al-Jazeera the other day. He is the voice of reason when it comes to the Israel/Palestine question. As he was offering a sensible and reasonable attitude to a complex problem my eye alighted on the banner headlines; a long list of killings, torture, wars, kidnapping, fear, fire, flood. It made DBs words sound like a voice in the wilderness railing against the wind. It struck me that is that banner was the only source of information, then you would have to be in continual despair. But the banner is but a microcosm of hate and disaster and stupidity that reigns over the world. The real truth is more horrific, felt by everyone from abused children to the decrepitude and pains of old age. We daily put this horror to one side. Occasionally we allow it to intrude upon our silence and calm; it is the truth, though.

Some of us are born with optimism, others not. The truth is with the others. But one day even I, an optimist in my spirit, though a realist in my intellect, will have to face the horror.

So it seems to me that if a person wants to choose the time and manner of their own death, then so be it. How much better is that than the painful and horrific inevitability of death dished out by nature (or god if you are that way inclined).

[KaydeeDID88]

i do not think this service should be available to those with a mental illnesses. i am saying this because i myself have a bi-polar disorder which is classified as a mental illness. i have at times tried to harm myself by attempting suicide and it wasnt because i wanted to. most of the time when people with mental illness try to committ suicide it is a cry for help.

assisted suicide should only be availale to those with terminal illness like cancer, or severe dementia.

[The Voice of Time]

On this subject, I must just say that desiring to commit suicide is a mental illness in and of itself, and therefore, by aiding, you are just making the person succumb to their mental illness.

[Hobbes' Choice]

On this subject, I must just say that desiring to commit suicide is a mental illness in and of itself, and therefore, by aiding, you are just making the person succumb to their mental illness.

The view that wanting to die is a mental illness is the pinnacle of ignorance and denial.

We all die, so there is nothing mentally wrong with wanting to have some control over that event.
In the avoidance of pain and suffering, wanting to die is a logical and balanced choice.
I think you are in a state of adolescent denial about the truth of human existence.

[The Voice of Time]

The view that wanting to die is a mental illness is the pinnacle of ignorance and denial.

We all die, so there is nothing mentally wrong with wanting to have some control over that event.
In the avoidance of pain and suffering, wanting to die is a logical and balanced choice.
I think you are in a state of adolescent denial about the truth of human existence.

I've wanted to die before, and even tested the extent to which I'm willing to commit to suicide, and I've heard about others do it and experienced people expressing desire to do it. I saw nothing sane about it, to paraphrase yourself: it's the pinnacle of irrationality and inability.

Irrational because there's nothing of real value about ending everything, in order to escape pain you'll have to live to experience the escape, if you die, there is only the void, nothing you have escaped, because you're dead, what you've instead done, is perverted an idea of escape, a form of pervasion only possible by mental illness, and used imagination in order to conjure the possibility of attaining anything at all. However, like sex day-dreaming, you're only fooling yourself, however enjoyable it may be. The difference between a sex day-dream though, is that you're aware of your own silliness, while a suicidal person is lost in their own imagination.

It's inability because you're incapable of seizing control over yourself and reaffirm the power of your will. In my experience, the void of death, is desired as a way of not exposing your thoughts to the disorder of your mind, the destructive behaviour going on in your mind (a reallocation of mind resources). You put your desires and thoughts there in order to achieve an irrefutable order in your disorder. However, you are perfectly capable of achieving the same kind of order that the void is giving you with other forms of reallocations (indeed, healthy minds are very capable of this, and it is how they attain joy or "peace of the soul" and things like it...). It is my belief that you first have to have a perverse belief in the value of death (as an object in and of itself) before you will choose to make that special reallocation, or a poor mind, such that you don't know any better (and therefore you're simply: too stupid to value life). And perversity and ignorance are not valid reasons to worship death.

There is everything to be gained at living (as long as you live, you can never loose anything... pain is struggle, not loss), nothing to be gained at death unless your death has other consequences that are not part of death itself and for which you strive for and just happens to be willing to "pay" for (without a such-called "suicidal bias", that means you are "selling out cheap" and that you are overly willing to let yourself risk death for death's sake and not the cause). Like a warrior who sacrifices him/herself to defend his/her cause, but not for the sake of dying, but for the sake of efforting towards his/her cause. Or a scientist workaholic that reaches into knowledge and experience that is exposing him/herself to dangerous high-risk situations, and that eventually kills the person. Or an extreme sportsperson trying to extend the limits of his/her capabilities and that dies in the attempt.

Give to people who both have the same disease, both experience the same immense pain, yet one of them fights the disease, and another succumb to it. You aid the succumbing if you assist anyone in committing suicide -> you are part of the disease, and it is people like yourself, who would have to be kept from the person, in order for the person to regain rationality and ability, and start fighting.

[thedoc]

On this subject,

I think you are in a state of adolescent denial about the truth of human existence.

I agree.