In light of this idiotic take ("interfering is absolutely despicable no matter how I'll") I feel like I should share my own experiences with frequent suicidal impulses, and how thankful I am that someone was there and willing to help me, on many occasions.
I'm bipolar, and when I was untreated I would frequently (as on every other day) spend hours locked in a doom-spiral of self hatred, incapable of breaking myself out of it. I could recognize what was going on at some level, and that if I were pulled out of the spiral I would be fine, but in the moment trying to escape that pain seemed to only have one solution, even if I knew I normally wouldn't want to die.
I would basically have to try and hold myself together long enough for my wife to find me and help me back to sanity. Each time I got a little closer to failing. Getting access to medication was life changing.
I am enterally thankful she took away deadly instruments, encouraged me to find reasons to live and recover, and ultimately seek treatment. Whereas you would have just left me to irrevocably take my own life in response to temporary problem that had a medical solution readily available.
It's not quite as simple as that. One of the reasons the suicide rate is so high in the US is because of how easy it is to access firearms. This suggests that peoples' propensity to commit suicide is at least somewhat dependent on their environment. Given that, do you want to make their environment more or less likely to cause them to commit suicide? I'm in the latter category.
As for the concern about basic rights, I fundamentally agree. For some people, perhaps, they will never get better and in those cases we should have a path to assisted suicide. In all cases, we should do our best to help suicidal people, who are ultimately suffering a lot. I don't think most people who are suicidal want to specifically die more than they want an end to their suffering, to which they see no realistic alternative other than death (which I assure you remains quite scary even when you're really depressed.) I think giving them an escape other than death is morally obligatory and humane, where it's possible.
>One of the reasons the suicide rate is so high in the US is because of how easy it is to access firearms.
Is this actually true? I know it's said quite often, but there are countries with much much higher suicide rates where firearms aren't nearly as ubiquitous. Eg Lithuania.
The suicide attempt rate is only marginally higher in the US than in other developed countries (something that can be explained by other factors much easier than access to guns)
The amount of people who die to suicide is higher in the US because you are much more likely to actually die if you use a gun to commit suicide than other common methods. Higher access to guns increases the rate of people who successfully kill themselves. (Which is probably a bad thing. In general those who survive suicide attempts are happy that they lived.)
> I know it's said quite often, but there are countries with much much higher suicide rates where firearms aren't nearly as ubiquitous. Eg Lithuania.
The rates in the US are high because of access to guns. It's well understood in public health that easy access to means and methods is one of the factors driving high rates of death.
The rates in Lithuania are high because of a number of other factors -- high alcohol misuse probably being important. Also, there are plenty of guns in Lithuania, and firearms are one of the most frequently used methods.
In general one usually gets more meaningful results when a) comparing geographically and/or culturally similar countries for things like these. E.G the UK has half the mortality rate of the US, Canada and the EU have 2/3 of the US rate. And b) compare trends, not single values. E.G. US rates are rising (which I as a layman would interpret as speaking against the firearms thesis), while the rates of Lithuana and Japan are falling.
Another excellent example of this is removing carbon monoxide from ovens, which instantly reduced suicide numbers. Suicidal impulses are rarely a considered decision, so removing the opportunity immediate opportunity is very impactive
The suicide by gun rate is higher in the USA. Not the overall suicide rate. It's just as easy to off yourself using transport (CO, intentional crash, jumper), ligature strangulation (bedsheets, scarf, belt), exsanguination, or overdose of almost anything and all of those things are widely available all around the world.
I agree with this in the abstract, but someone's right to self-determination isn't being infringed if 99% of the time they don't want to do something and you stop them from doing it in the 1%.
This is particularly true if they call you during the bad 1% and directly ask you to stop them from doing the thing.
Uh yes it is being infringed. If I steal money from you against your will that one time, would you be okay with it on account of the fact that you willingly gave me money 99 other times? I've never heard of rights being only applicable 99% of the time.
That's not a good analogy, because if I steal money off you today, you'll be angry with me tomorrow, and indefinitely into the future. You are against me stealing from you 100% of the time.
Consider instead the case where you're a recovering gambling addict who's asked me to make sure you don't gamble again. One night I find you in the pokies room, so I take your wallet and tell you I'll give it back tomorrow morning. I agree that this is theft and possibly morally wrong; however, I don't agree that it breaches your right to self-determination, since most of the time you seem pretty determined not to gamble.
So if someone consistently tells you that they want to die, if they consistently get angry at you and authorities for intervening, you're saying that you'll support their right to self-determination?
Yes. If someone demonstrates a consistent determination to die, when asked at random times, and over a long enough time period to rule out episodic mental health issues, and they've made appropriate arrangements for their family, I don't think they should be stopped from killing themselves.
I disagree with the claim that many suicides are like that, I don't think the suicide from the article was like that, and the word "consistently" is doing a lot of heavy lifting.
Appreciate your honesty and consistency. Likewise, I think the phrase "mental health issue" does a lot of heavy lifting for you. I don't think many mental health issues disqualify you from making a self-respecting decision over your own body. Few truly want to impose such extended blanket restrictions on other life or death decisions like critical treatment-refusal, military action, many types of self-destructive behavior or (controversially) abortion. Something about suicide brings out people's inner autocrat.
Yeah, episodic is the differentiator for me in terms of what should be prevented. With someone suffering episodes of severe depression, there's a clash between what the individual wants while not suicidal vs while suicidal.
Intuitively I feel that it's like two different people are making decisions about the one body, and the finality of suicide means the suicidal part of someone is wiping out the future for both, and should thus be prevented.
Again, though, the majority of suicide victims aren't suicidal for large periods of their lives. I feel that in the cases where someone is only briefly suicidal during the worst troughs of mood, the suicidal 1% of a life would wipe out the non-suicidal 99%, which is a monumental loss to inflict.
someone who suffers from suicidal tendencies as a result of mental illness is in no capacity to make these decisions, they're as incapable of making actual decisions as a minor, probably more so and should be institutionalized.
The right to self-determination derives from an assumption of someone being in a clear state of mind, that's why we have plenty of conditions under which we withdraw that right.
How wonderfully tautological this is: those with suicidal tendencies are deemed incapable of making the choice due to "mental illness". How can you tell if they're mentally ill? You look for symptoms of course, symptoms like "they have suicidal tendencies".
no, it's not tautological at all. There are categories of suicide that are clearly defensible, like euthanasia for end of life patients who have made the decision that any quality of life is irredeemably lost, for example.
But the 38 year old husband, the subject of the article, who was in an unstable mental state to the point where his wife felt threatened and left for the safety of their children was certainly not in command of his mental faculties.
Someone who is schizophrenic and bipolar and experiences a psychotic break after drastically changing their medication regimen is not in a sound state of mind, and they would be the first to admit it once their condition improves.
Ok then: if the 38yo husband took his increasingly unaffordable meds of choice and told you in a period of lucidity that he wants to die rather than suffer a lifetime of violent psychosis, drug-induced delirium and likely debt, or as you might call it "any quality of life is irredeemably lost", would you let him? Do you have another excuse for why he still cannot make that choice for himself, why he will never be able to make that choice for himself?
First you said they can't do it because they're mentally incapable of making the choice, now you're discussing whether a suicide is "clearly defensible". It doesn't matter if a suicide is "clearly defensible" or not. People don't have to defend their choices to you. That's the point of having the freedom to choose.
The article mentions that the man preferred treatment and his choice of meds from private insurance that eventually ran out. I know the UK has a public health system, that was the system that he died in.
But why doesn't "not being in command of one's mental faculties" qualify as a valid reason to want to end one's life? If that is ongoing, and unlikely to ever improve, I can well imagine wanting to off myself, rather than continue within that nightmare.
Cannot agree more. Just like many other acts which are punished today, but should be rather dealt with by showing support, self harm should definitely be taken off the list of acts that are treated like a crime. I can only guess, but it feels like the current approach only makes things worse for those who are already suffering.
