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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 heal
by themacguffinman 5y ago
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.
- strken 5y agoYeah, 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.