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“The so-called ‘psychotically depressed’ person who tries to kill herself doesn’t do so out of quote ‘hopelessness’ or any abstract conviction that life’s asset

“The so-called ‘psychotically depressed’ person who tries to kill herself doesn’t do so out of quote ‘hopelessness’ or any abstract conviction that life’s assets and debits do not square. And surely not because death seems suddenly appealing. The person in whom Its invisible agony reaches a certain unendurable level will kill herself the same way a trapped person will eventually jump from the window of a burning high-rise. Make no mistake about people who leap from burning windows. Their terror of falling from a great height is still just as great as it would be for you or me standing speculatively at the same window just checking out the view; i.e. the fear of falling remains a constant. The variable here is the other terror, the fire’s flames: when the flames get close enough, falling to death becomes the slightly less terrible of two terrors. It’s not desiring the fall; it’s terror of the flames. And yet nobody down on the sidewalk, looking up and yelling ‘Don’t!’ and ‘Hang on!’, can understand the jump. Not really. You’d have to have personally been trapped and felt flames to really understand a terror way beyond falling.” - David Foster Wallace The essence of Liberty is the ownership of one's own life. You owe it to no one - not even a hypothetical Future Self - to stay alive at all costs. Just as all humans have the right to live with dignity and without pain, we have the right to die in the same manner. I hope that's acknowledged one day.

cm2012 7y ago
If your happy but very drunk friend wanted to tapdance on the edge of a tall building, would you restrain them if necessary? Or if someone high on shrooms was trying to drink bleach? A suicidal mind is often one caught in the temporary throes of delusion and irrationality, even if it comes from internal wiring going haywire instead of external substances. Preventing someone from killing themselves is in their best interest most of the time for that reason. Suicidal impulses are most often fleeting relative to normal lifespan. My wife tried to kill herself a few times when we were younger - I wrestled knives from her hands and had to get a safe for pills (which she agreed to in her better states). With therapy and medicine, she is very, very happy to be alive now.
- DoreenMichele 7y ago
  There are many people for whom life is a living hell with no hope of escape other than to end it. Insisting they live amounts to serving as their warden and torturer. If it isn't someone you are personally willing to take some responsibility for, as you did with your wife, then I think it is wrong to insist they live. I'm quite open about my long history of being suicidal and the various underlying reasons why. People on the internet often want to tell me "chin up, tally ho, here's a suicide hotline number." They generally don't want to do anything whatsoever to help with any of the actual underlying problems. In fact, they usually make me feel like they are merely using me as their "good deed for the day" to make themselves feel like good people. It generally pisses me off and makes me feel crapped all over. I'm pro right to die, but this article casts light on how very complicated the issue is. I would be horrified to learn that "I got raped and now want to die" is some new standard for helping women kill themselves. I just can't even begin to come up with the words for how mixed my feelings are about this girl's story.
  - candiodari 7y ago
    > If it isn't someone you are personally willing to take some responsibility for, as you did with your wife, then I think it is wrong to insist they live. Exactly. People, even kids, kill themselves because of "lack of perspective". Lack of a (reasonable) future. Lack of any reasonable hope for change. People aren't stupid and mental illnesses (the non-medical ones) don't actually prevent thinking. That means the first thing to realize is that a desire to kill yourself isn't illogical. Maybe it's a mistake but maybe it isn't. Which of course is terrible and of course absolutely not what society expects of help. Here's this kid. She's broken. Find the miswire in her brain, cut it or something, and bring them back fixed. And then you read the story of the kid. Was "diagnosed" with Autism by a teacher with no psychological skills whatsoever. From that point on systematically increasing repression was used against this kid, and of course as a psychological/social worker you cannot change their situation. That, youth services will not let a psychiatrist do. They need to be fixed and accept whatever "help" other people feel the need to provide, decided by whoever gets put in charge by the government (they "just happen" to never ever be the people who actually take responsibility for the child). That's your only function. Oh and by the way, if you can't do it in 6 weeks (can be up to 16), the kid will be violently taken away by the police, in cuffs, and someone else gets that job. Oh, and if they commit suicide in your clinic, they'll bankrupt you and maybe you'll go to jail. Good luck ! So the problem in this girl's case is not just that her conclusion, that there was no perspective on a better life ... well let's just say it wasn't a particularly stupid or obviously wrong assessment of her situation. The things she didn't have control over weren't getting better over time. And she tolerated being treated like that "for her protection" for at least 3 years ... Do you really feel you'd last that long ? Kids are actually far more resilient than adults when it comes to being suicidal, but enough punishment ("help" provided involuntarily, like in the case being discussed here) will get the better of them soon. Every 3 months you get moved somewhere else, in cuffs, and the next thing is tried on you. That might be good, it might also be 12 weeks in an isolation cell. You just don't know. Hell, because they just take whatever is available right at the moment they move you (because your current placement ends you have to leave, doesn't mean they have somewhere else for you to go). So the social workers, your parents, even the juvenile judge also doesn't know, except perhaps a day or so in advance. Good luck feeling optimistic about your future. So of course youth services itself was the cause of the lack of perspective. "Safety" for the child, imposing safety on her is what killed her. Escalating to heavier and heavier repression every time. As soon as she worsened in care someone should of course have pressed the abort button, EVEN knowing she was cutting herself or suicidal. Send her home and say she can stay there unless she chooses otherwise. Why ? To prevent doing more damage. To make it clear that her home was still there, and that the situation really is salvageable. But if you as a social worker or psychiatrist take that chance, and the result is that it was too late, and the kid does commit suicide (or worse: their parents or someone they're exposed to back home takes advantage of the situation), you'll be eaten alive by society. So nobody does. Everybody avoids responsibility, and thus taking chances on not treating kids is barely ever done. The odds are actually in favor of doing this. Even people who've tried to commit suicide, only 3% actually follow through with it, meaning the symptom disappears in 97% of cases, which is far better than treatment accomplishes. About 400 kids are placed (which means locked up against the will of parents and child) "for their safety" for every 1 case of actual abuse in the Netherlands. Social workers build cases against these kids that aren't checked for accuracy (it is an actual policy for them to write down everything they hear, and to never check), there is no defense possible, there are children's rights, but no way to sue child services if they are violated, so there might as well not be. There is no actual appeal process against the youth court (technically there is, but whatever "protection measure" they put forth is always immediately executed, appeal or not, nor is it canceled on a succesfull appeal, it is re-evaluated by the original judge (after, of course, another waiting period). This heavily punishes appeal since if an appeal is filed, no adjustments (such as visitation by your parents, or a friend, or more phone numbers you get to call, or ...) are possible until the appeal is heard, sometimes years later) It is very clear that at this point the system damages many more kids than it helps. BUT there is money being handed out. For example, if you have a handicapped kid, and you need help paying for a wheelchair, this is done through youth services, with "pgb" (meaning money that "follows the kid"). Parents can even use this money to pay themselves (very badly I might add, but it's something) for watching the kid if the care required is heavy enough that the kid can't be left alone. Or to get them after school lessons for free. Or ... Also schools, institutions, even things like children's farms can get extra money through the system, if they get "problem" kids assigned to them, and so kids are being forced into it, sometimes by their own parents. But where the real damage is done is where social workers are both being made responsible for deciding on care, and paid for providing care. The perverse incentive is of course that one can easily see that institutions', schools', social workers', ... optimal strategy is to "treat" kids that are normal to begin with, diagnose them with something like "autism", and "treat" them. How many social workers, how many schools, how many institutions do this ? Hopefully not too many, but it's equally obvious that it's rather unlikely to be zero. This has resulted in that apparently a solid 11% of Dutch kids have a serious psychiatric problem necessitating professional aid in any one year. Internationally, it's not even 3% (and that number is over 18 years). That number is rising. Just for autism, 2.5% of Dutch kids are diagnosed with it, whereas international numbers are between 0.6% and 1%.
tomohawk 7y ago
You owe it to your family and friends to face your troubles and not take a cowards path. We're all in this together and we should try to stick together.
- hestipod 7y ago
  I have had to retype this comment many times to restrain myself...calling people who cannot endure "cowards" is shameful and I wish you could see how wrong it is. Yes we should try to stick together and that is a huge part of the problem, but not the fault of the people who cannot survive. They aren't just bailing because they are lazy or have nothing better to do or are not "sticking with society" in some strange obligation, rather because they suffer pain you cannot comprehend, because if you could then you would never demean them in such a way.
  - FakeComments 7y ago
    It’s particularly egregious, since very often society didn’t “stick with them” in any meaningful sense. It’s straight out gaslighting to call a victim a coward for escaping abuse.
4ntonius8lock 7y ago
Thank you. The day I kill myself it will be a long thought out choice. Not many people can handle that without disrespecting the perspective, or worse, wanting violence applied against my will. The arrogance of some people to think they know best for me is amazing. P.S. I'm not suicidal now, it's a family condition that will mean (likely) one day I'll be deteriorated to the point I will want to check out.
wayoutthere 7y ago
There are two minds of this as best exemplified by Camus and Sartre. A core tenet of existentialism is that we are always free to make choices, even if we cannot always control our circumstances. We’re still responsible for making choices — even choosing to not choose. Sartre was a believer in absolute freedom, and that suicide was a choice among many others that a person could make (and indeed, Sartre eventually did). Camus, on the other hand, believed that suicide was the rejection of freedom. Once you commit suicide, you are no longer free to make any further choices. I tend to be more sympathetic to this view: I have an eternity to be dead, but a short time make choices good and bad.
- AstralStorm 7y ago
  And what does Camus say you should do when your freedom is curtailed in unacceptable ways? (Note: way beyond social contract.)
  - h0l0cube 7y ago
    I don't know about Camus, but Epictetus had some interesting things to say: “Remember that the door is open. Don’t be more cowardly than children, but just as they say, when the game is no longer fun for them, ‘I won’t play any more,’ you too, when things seem that way to you, say, ‘I won’t play any more,’ and leave, but if you remain, don’t complain.” (Discourses I.24.20) “Has someone made smoke in the house? If it is moderate, I’ll stay. If too much, I exit. For you must always remember and hold fast to this, that the door is open.” (Discourses I.25.18) https://howtobeastoic.wordpress.com/2016/04/05/epictetus-on-suicide-the-open-door-policy/ https://howtobeastoic.wordpress.com/2016/04/05/epictetus-on-...
  - kentrado 7y ago
    Camus argued against suicide but made the exception for cases of chronic pain due to illness and such. I think this is a better summary than what you can get from a random comment in hacker news: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xVdF0k4DN1U&t=197s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xVdF0k4DN1U&t=197s
  - Bakary 7y ago
Barrin92 7y ago
In the particular case of depression and mental illness suicide is often itself a symptom of the disease. It's not so simple to just portray this as an act of individual choice or liberty. If a mentally ill person is effectively treated the desire to kill themselves will generally subside, and at that point we know that it wasn't a rational choice but a biological symptom. The case here is much more difficult than say, assisted suicide for a terminally ill, old and frail patient. it's not that they owe their life to us, but that we owe it to mentally ill people to care for them until they are in a state of mind in which we can be sure their decision to end their lives is not just an accident of brain chemistry. For a 17 year old girl the chance that her condition improves, even if treatment resistent at the current point at time, is actually still plausible.
- rincebrain 7y ago
  How do you define when the suicidal ideation is irrational, though? Let's say you're having a persistent depressive episode, and have had suicidal urges and possibly even attempted it in the past. Let's further say that you've been attempting treatment consistently from multiple approaches, for extended time intervals, and none of them have yielded improvement. Is there a point at which the suicidal urges should no longer be considered irrational? There's a viable argument that their urge to end themselves is a direct result of their condition (e.g. if we removed the condition, the desire would evaporate), but there's also a viable argument that their urge is an increasingly rational response to extended suffering with little hope of improvement. Unfortunately, while I'd like to say the answer to this is more objective ways to quantify prospects for improvement, I don't currently know of much research on the horizon that would enable this, as too much of how our psychiatric care works is currently guess-and-check, and we don't even know where we'd look if we had good near-realtime monitoring for neural interactions. (The above hypothetical does not reflect my life experiences - I've never been at risk of self-harm for the lovely malaise of depression that pervades my mind, but a few years ago, I was given a treatment which, for a little while, made me much closer to neurotypical functioning - but it stopped working after a few months, not because I had stopped receiving the treatment, and having acute memories of how pervasive this problem was, and how much nicer life could be, is probably the closest I've been to that particular precipice.)
mikojan 7y ago
Kind of ruined that quote with the propertarianist hot take
alexhutcheson 7y ago
I’d highly recommend reading this piece by a psychiatrist for a (research-based) alternative perspective: https://slatestarcodex.com/2013/04/25/in-defense-of-psych-treatment-for-attempted-suicide/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2013/04/25/in-defense-of-psych-tr...
fortdriad 7y ago
To take this a bit further: As a psychologist what I've grown outraged by is the hypocrisy of current approaches to suicide, in that they are all focused on stopping suicide, but not the pain that drives it. We talk about taking away guns and pills, putting up fences around parking ramps and bridges, monitoring social media, and so forth and so on. But we do nothing to address the psychosocial ills that drive the suicidal person to their state. Labeling the suicidal as "mentally ill" does nothing but allow the living to wash their hands of the accumulated insults that drive someone to where they are, to feel good and then walk away from the most difficult issues to address. It places the blame on the person who is suicidal. It's not about protecting the suicidal, it's about protecting the living from guilt. Sure, there are many people who obviously suffer from some sort of biological insult, but there is also a large grey area of those who have some kind of handicap, who are then thrust into horrific circumstances on top of that. And there are those who just get a bad lot in life. These issues are spilling over into euthanasia in a way that's starkly highlighted by this case. I'm not saying healthcare professionals should be forced into something they see as murder, or murkily close to it. What I'm saying is that as a society, our focus should be less on preventing people from accessing the means of suicide -- or euthanasia as the label may be -- and more on the sources of pain that drives them to it.
penguin_booze 7y ago
Could someone tell me from where this excerpt is?

cm2012 7y ago

If your happy but very drunk friend wanted to tapdance on the edge of a tall building, would you restrain them if necessary? Or if someone high on shrooms was trying to drink bleach? A suicidal mind is often one caught in the temporary throes of delusion and irrationality, even if it comes from internal wiring going haywire instead of external substances. Preventing someone from killing themselves is in their best interest most of the time for that reason. Suicidal impulses are most often fleeting relative to normal lifespan. My wife tried to kill herself a few times when we were younger - I wrestled knives from her hands and had to get a safe for pills (which she agreed to in her better states). With therapy and medicine, she is very, very happy to be alive now.

DoreenMichele 7y ago
There are many people for whom life is a living hell with no hope of escape other than to end it. Insisting they live amounts to serving as their warden and torturer. If it isn't someone you are personally willing to take some responsibility for, as you did with your wife, then I think it is wrong to insist they live. I'm quite open about my long history of being suicidal and the various underlying reasons why. People on the internet often want to tell me "chin up, tally ho, here's a suicide hotline number." They generally don't want to do anything whatsoever to help with any of the actual underlying problems. In fact, they usually make me feel like they are merely using me as their "good deed for the day" to make themselves feel like good people. It generally pisses me off and makes me feel crapped all over. I'm pro right to die, but this article casts light on how very complicated the issue is. I would be horrified to learn that "I got raped and now want to die" is some new standard for helping women kill themselves. I just can't even begin to come up with the words for how mixed my feelings are about this girl's story.
- candiodari 7y ago
  > If it isn't someone you are personally willing to take some responsibility for, as you did with your wife, then I think it is wrong to insist they live. Exactly. People, even kids, kill themselves because of "lack of perspective". Lack of a (reasonable) future. Lack of any reasonable hope for change. People aren't stupid and mental illnesses (the non-medical ones) don't actually prevent thinking. That means the first thing to realize is that a desire to kill yourself isn't illogical. Maybe it's a mistake but maybe it isn't. Which of course is terrible and of course absolutely not what society expects of help. Here's this kid. She's broken. Find the miswire in her brain, cut it or something, and bring them back fixed. And then you read the story of the kid. Was "diagnosed" with Autism by a teacher with no psychological skills whatsoever. From that point on systematically increasing repression was used against this kid, and of course as a psychological/social worker you cannot change their situation. That, youth services will not let a psychiatrist do. They need to be fixed and accept whatever "help" other people feel the need to provide, decided by whoever gets put in charge by the government (they "just happen" to never ever be the people who actually take responsibility for the child). That's your only function. Oh and by the way, if you can't do it in 6 weeks (can be up to 16), the kid will be violently taken away by the police, in cuffs, and someone else gets that job. Oh, and if they commit suicide in your clinic, they'll bankrupt you and maybe you'll go to jail. Good luck ! So the problem in this girl's case is not just that her conclusion, that there was no perspective on a better life ... well let's just say it wasn't a particularly stupid or obviously wrong assessment of her situation. The things she didn't have control over weren't getting better over time. And she tolerated being treated like that "for her protection" for at least 3 years ... Do you really feel you'd last that long ? Kids are actually far more resilient than adults when it comes to being suicidal, but enough punishment ("help" provided involuntarily, like in the case being discussed here) will get the better of them soon. Every 3 months you get moved somewhere else, in cuffs, and the next thing is tried on you. That might be good, it might also be 12 weeks in an isolation cell. You just don't know. Hell, because they just take whatever is available right at the moment they move you (because your current placement ends you have to leave, doesn't mean they have somewhere else for you to go). So the social workers, your parents, even the juvenile judge also doesn't know, except perhaps a day or so in advance. Good luck feeling optimistic about your future. So of course youth services itself was the cause of the lack of perspective. "Safety" for the child, imposing safety on her is what killed her. Escalating to heavier and heavier repression every time. As soon as she worsened in care someone should of course have pressed the abort button, EVEN knowing she was cutting herself or suicidal. Send her home and say she can stay there unless she chooses otherwise. Why ? To prevent doing more damage. To make it clear that her home was still there, and that the situation really is salvageable. But if you as a social worker or psychiatrist take that chance, and the result is that it was too late, and the kid does commit suicide (or worse: their parents or someone they're exposed to back home takes advantage of the situation), you'll be eaten alive by society. So nobody does. Everybody avoids responsibility, and thus taking chances on not treating kids is barely ever done. The odds are actually in favor of doing this. Even people who've tried to commit suicide, only 3% actually follow through with it, meaning the symptom disappears in 97% of cases, which is far better than treatment accomplishes. About 400 kids are placed (which means locked up against the will of parents and child) "for their safety" for every 1 case of actual abuse in the Netherlands. Social workers build cases against these kids that aren't checked for accuracy (it is an actual policy for them to write down everything they hear, and to never check), there is no defense possible, there are children's rights, but no way to sue child services if they are violated, so there might as well not be. There is no actual appeal process against the youth court (technically there is, but whatever "protection measure" they put forth is always immediately executed, appeal or not, nor is it canceled on a succesfull appeal, it is re-evaluated by the original judge (after, of course, another waiting period). This heavily punishes appeal since if an appeal is filed, no adjustments (such as visitation by your parents, or a friend, or more phone numbers you get to call, or ...) are possible until the appeal is heard, sometimes years later) It is very clear that at this point the system damages many more kids than it helps. BUT there is money being handed out. For example, if you have a handicapped kid, and you need help paying for a wheelchair, this is done through youth services, with "pgb" (meaning money that "follows the kid"). Parents can even use this money to pay themselves (very badly I might add, but it's something) for watching the kid if the care required is heavy enough that the kid can't be left alone. Or to get them after school lessons for free. Or ... Also schools, institutions, even things like children's farms can get extra money through the system, if they get "problem" kids assigned to them, and so kids are being forced into it, sometimes by their own parents. But where the real damage is done is where social workers are both being made responsible for deciding on care, and paid for providing care. The perverse incentive is of course that one can easily see that institutions', schools', social workers', ... optimal strategy is to "treat" kids that are normal to begin with, diagnose them with something like "autism", and "treat" them. How many social workers, how many schools, how many institutions do this ? Hopefully not too many, but it's equally obvious that it's rather unlikely to be zero. This has resulted in that apparently a solid 11% of Dutch kids have a serious psychiatric problem necessitating professional aid in any one year. Internationally, it's not even 3% (and that number is over 18 years). That number is rising. Just for autism, 2.5% of Dutch kids are diagnosed with it, whereas international numbers are between 0.6% and 1%.

tomohawk 7y ago

You owe it to your family and friends to face your troubles and not take a cowards path. We're all in this together and we should try to stick together.

hestipod 7y ago
I have had to retype this comment many times to restrain myself...calling people who cannot endure "cowards" is shameful and I wish you could see how wrong it is. Yes we should try to stick together and that is a huge part of the problem, but not the fault of the people who cannot survive. They aren't just bailing because they are lazy or have nothing better to do or are not "sticking with society" in some strange obligation, rather because they suffer pain you cannot comprehend, because if you could then you would never demean them in such a way.
- FakeComments 7y ago
  It’s particularly egregious, since very often society didn’t “stick with them” in any meaningful sense. It’s straight out gaslighting to call a victim a coward for escaping abuse.

4ntonius8lock 7y ago

Thank you. The day I kill myself it will be a long thought out choice. Not many people can handle that without disrespecting the perspective, or worse, wanting violence applied against my will. The arrogance of some people to think they know best for me is amazing. P.S. I'm not suicidal now, it's a family condition that will mean (likely) one day I'll be deteriorated to the point I will want to check out.

wayoutthere 7y ago

There are two minds of this as best exemplified by Camus and Sartre. A core tenet of existentialism is that we are always free to make choices, even if we cannot always control our circumstances. We’re still responsible for making choices — even choosing to not choose. Sartre was a believer in absolute freedom, and that suicide was a choice among many others that a person could make (and indeed, Sartre eventually did). Camus, on the other hand, believed that suicide was the rejection of freedom. Once you commit suicide, you are no longer free to make any further choices. I tend to be more sympathetic to this view: I have an eternity to be dead, but a short time make choices good and bad.

AstralStorm 7y ago
And what does Camus say you should do when your freedom is curtailed in unacceptable ways? (Note: way beyond social contract.)
- h0l0cube 7y ago
  I don't know about Camus, but Epictetus had some interesting things to say: “Remember that the door is open. Don’t be more cowardly than children, but just as they say, when the game is no longer fun for them, ‘I won’t play any more,’ you too, when things seem that way to you, say, ‘I won’t play any more,’ and leave, but if you remain, don’t complain.” (Discourses I.24.20) “Has someone made smoke in the house? If it is moderate, I’ll stay. If too much, I exit. For you must always remember and hold fast to this, that the door is open.” (Discourses I.25.18) https://howtobeastoic.wordpress.com/2016/04/05/epictetus-on-suicide-the-open-door-policy/ https://howtobeastoic.wordpress.com/2016/04/05/epictetus-on-...
- kentrado 7y ago
  Camus argued against suicide but made the exception for cases of chronic pain due to illness and such. I think this is a better summary than what you can get from a random comment in hacker news: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xVdF0k4DN1U&t=197s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xVdF0k4DN1U&t=197s
- Bakary 7y ago

Barrin92 7y ago

In the particular case of depression and mental illness suicide is often itself a symptom of the disease. It's not so simple to just portray this as an act of individual choice or liberty. If a mentally ill person is effectively treated the desire to kill themselves will generally subside, and at that point we know that it wasn't a rational choice but a biological symptom. The case here is much more difficult than say, assisted suicide for a terminally ill, old and frail patient. it's not that they owe their life to us, but that we owe it to mentally ill people to care for them until they are in a state of mind in which we can be sure their decision to end their lives is not just an accident of brain chemistry. For a 17 year old girl the chance that her condition improves, even if treatment resistent at the current point at time, is actually still plausible.

rincebrain 7y ago
How do you define when the suicidal ideation is irrational, though? Let's say you're having a persistent depressive episode, and have had suicidal urges and possibly even attempted it in the past. Let's further say that you've been attempting treatment consistently from multiple approaches, for extended time intervals, and none of them have yielded improvement. Is there a point at which the suicidal urges should no longer be considered irrational? There's a viable argument that their urge to end themselves is a direct result of their condition (e.g. if we removed the condition, the desire would evaporate), but there's also a viable argument that their urge is an increasingly rational response to extended suffering with little hope of improvement. Unfortunately, while I'd like to say the answer to this is more objective ways to quantify prospects for improvement, I don't currently know of much research on the horizon that would enable this, as too much of how our psychiatric care works is currently guess-and-check, and we don't even know where we'd look if we had good near-realtime monitoring for neural interactions. (The above hypothetical does not reflect my life experiences - I've never been at risk of self-harm for the lovely malaise of depression that pervades my mind, but a few years ago, I was given a treatment which, for a little while, made me much closer to neurotypical functioning - but it stopped working after a few months, not because I had stopped receiving the treatment, and having acute memories of how pervasive this problem was, and how much nicer life could be, is probably the closest I've been to that particular precipice.)

mikojan 7y ago

Kind of ruined that quote with the propertarianist hot take

alexhutcheson 7y ago

I’d highly recommend reading this piece by a psychiatrist for a (research-based) alternative perspective: https://slatestarcodex.com/2013/04/25/in-defense-of-psych-treatment-for-attempted-suicide/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2013/04/25/in-defense-of-psych-tr...

fortdriad 7y ago

To take this a bit further: As a psychologist what I've grown outraged by is the hypocrisy of current approaches to suicide, in that they are all focused on stopping suicide, but not the pain that drives it. We talk about taking away guns and pills, putting up fences around parking ramps and bridges, monitoring social media, and so forth and so on. But we do nothing to address the psychosocial ills that drive the suicidal person to their state. Labeling the suicidal as "mentally ill" does nothing but allow the living to wash their hands of the accumulated insults that drive someone to where they are, to feel good and then walk away from the most difficult issues to address. It places the blame on the person who is suicidal. It's not about protecting the suicidal, it's about protecting the living from guilt. Sure, there are many people who obviously suffer from some sort of biological insult, but there is also a large grey area of those who have some kind of handicap, who are then thrust into horrific circumstances on top of that. And there are those who just get a bad lot in life. These issues are spilling over into euthanasia in a way that's starkly highlighted by this case. I'm not saying healthcare professionals should be forced into something they see as murder, or murkily close to it. What I'm saying is that as a society, our focus should be less on preventing people from accessing the means of suicide -- or euthanasia as the label may be -- and more on the sources of pain that drives them to it.

penguin_booze 7y ago

Could someone tell me from where this excerpt is?