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Young woman with PTSD who survived Brussels airport terror attack 'euthanised'
- Bostonian 4y agoSome depressed people will commit suicide, but the government should not facilitate this.
- toomuchtodo 4y agoContradicts with freedom, free will, and bodily autonomy. People who want out should be allowed out under some circumstances. Two psychiatrists signed off in this case. How many would you need before stamping approval on someone’s wish to leave this plane of existence? Not a rhetorical question.
- rayiner 4y ago> Contradicts with freedom, free will, and bodily autonomy. Those are socially constructed concepts and society decides their metes and bounds.
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- toomuchtodo 4y agoIs your issue with Belgium (where this is legal, among other developed countries)? Or legal/government sanctioned euthanasia in general? Follow up question: thoughts on jurisdiction shopping for this when citizens can travel there from a country that doesn’t respect their rights domestically (a tale as old as time)?
- rayiner 4y agoBelgians can do what they want, I guess. But we can judge empirically whether their social beliefs are pro-adaptive or mal-adaptive. Belgians are being supplanted by Muslim immigrants who definitely do not think suicide is okay. It’s unsurprising that a culture that doesn’t value life for its own sake is being out-competed by one that does.
- 2ICofafireteam 4y agoI don't know but for the other end of it, where I am, stamping approval to detain someone and prevent them from completing suicide takes one person for 48 hours and two for longer.
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- throwaway29303 4y agoThe government (and society in general) should stay out of other people's business w.r.t. their autonomy in this matter. People should be free to decide if they want to end their lives with dignity.
- f1shy 4y agoI think gov. should have the least power possible in any matter related to health.
- 2ICofafireteam 4y agoEuthanasia laws take that power from governments. Most places have a blanket prohibition on assisted death, which seems more authoritarian to me.
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- Vt71fcAqt7 4y agoWhy/how is dignity a factor here?
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- hey2022 4y agoBecause in many countries you can’t commit suicide with your family sitting by your bed. They will be charged for that. A dignified assisted death means you end your life on your terms.
- brnt 4y agoAnybody anywhere can commit suicide with varying success and aftermath. Having a clean, sure to work, painless death if you wish it so is a huge improvement over those self made options.
- masklinn 4y agoDo you mean that only people sufficiently able bodied should have that option? And that they should traumatise their friends and / or family in the process because that is traditional?
- jmclnx 4y agoI am on the fence on this. At 23 with mental Illness and the drugs she was taking, I think a full review of her treatment is needed. This has a bit more detail and somekind of review was done. https://nypost.com/2022/10/08/brussels-bombing-survivor-shanti-de-corte-23-dead-by-euthanasia/ https://nypost.com/2022/10/08/brussels-bombing-survivor-shan... But I think all Doctors that treated her should be looked at in more detail.
- CharlesW 4y ago> Some depressed people will commit suicide, but the government should not facilitate this. Would you be okay with privately run Futurama-style street kiosks, though? https://futurama.fandom.com/wiki/Suicide_Booth https://futurama.fandom.com/wiki/Suicide_Booth
- MichaelCollins 4y agoAssuming an implied 'but private businesses should' is not charitable, not responding to the strongest plausible interpretation of what somebody is saying.
- hotpotamus 4y agoIt seems like a fair response to me. In the US you can walk into a store and buy a handgun and ammunition and walk out to kill yourself in your car if you'd like - it happens fairly regularly. Often it's described as an unavoidable consequence of freedom.
- SamReidHughes 4y agoIf somebody wants to buy a gun telling you he is going to use it on himself, you shouldn't sell it to him.
- hotpotamus 4y agoI assume someone buying a handgun above .22 caliber has intentions of harming someone with it. Obviously the context of their use matters, but they're inherently dangerous objects that Americans have the right to own. It doesn't seem feasible to stop someone who wants to use it as they would like.
- bitxbitxbitcoin 4y agoThat’s a pretty blanket assumption given the growing number of high caliber revolver hunters. Or the yearly amount of people that buy a handgun for bear protection for an Alaskan fishing trip. Going down that feasibility line of thought just leads to Minority Report. What you are describing is the new fear gun culture gripping America and it passes the buck in the wrong direction.
- hayst4ck 4y agoWhy?
- legulere 4y agoDepression can lead to irrational and rational suicide attempts. It's all fine when your depression can get treated. But when you have severe depression where all treatment fails, how is that different from other diseases that cause suffering that cannot be relieved?
- AstralStorm 4y agoThe thing about certain mental health issues is that they can get better with actual long term therapy. I do not believe this happened here, the girl was treated at most 6 years. Describing it as 6 years of anguish is uncharitable to people who survived mental health problems for decades, and even manage to live with them. It can take years to find out that a certain therapy even works... And here we have people hastily resorting to big red button, even after messing up previous suicide attempts. I would not call it euthanasia, it's suicide by doctor. (In parallel with suicide by cop.)
- justsomehnguy 4y agoIt's all good and whatever until you are the one to scrub brains from the rails.
- BrandoElFollito 4y agoSo I cannot manage my own life in a sensible way? If I want to end it, does it have to be messy (as in jumping in front of a train)? Or not well working (as in jumping from a window and ending up paralyzed - which indeed will stop me from further silly attempts)? The government has a duty to facilitate it.
- draw_down 4y ago
- faeriechangling 4y agoWas she killed by the treatment or the attack? I've seen some very mentally disabled people and I've never seen "11 antidepressants" that's insane and in no way evidence based in any real sense.
- masklinn 4y agoWhat is your thinking exactly? That the victim and doctor went up to that because they found it was a good laugh, and a fun joke to carry over 6 years?
- CodeWriter23 4y agoI can't speak for OP. My thinking is, if 11 antidepressants are prescribed, SOME must be the SSRI types that have known side effects of homicide and suicide. I think there is an ethical question of a doctor prescribing both the antidepressants and a euthanization. Even if a separate practitioner was involved for the final decision. I'm not convinced it is possible for a fully volitional decision to be made by the deceased if her capacity were diminished by the antidepressants.
- amelius 4y ago> I think there is an ethical question of a doctor prescribing both the antidepressants and a euthanization. Very good point.
- formerkrogemp 4y agoThe person prescribing the antidepressant medications and the two psychiatrists evaluating and approving the euthanasia were different.
- skissane 4y agoHere’s my question - if the government is going to allow you to legally have professional help in killing yourself, is it also going to allow you to legally try every possible substance which might conceivably make your life bearable enough that you no longer want to do that-including psychedelics, heroin, etc? I’m pretty sure the answer in Belgium (and many other jurisdictions with legal euthanasia/assisted suicide) is “no”, which to me seems deeply perverse.
- elric 4y agoBelgian chiming in: Belgian law is decent good when it comes to assisted suicide ("euthanasia"). In order to be able to go ahead with it, the patient has to be suffering ("unbearable suffering", per the law), either physically or mentally, and the situation has to be "hopeless". In general, it's not something that can be done on a whim. You can't walk in to your doctor's office with a depression and come out in a body bag. There's a process, and you need the approval of multiple doctors (or shrinks).
- hirundo 4y agoI haven't heard PTSD characterized as a hopeless disorder before. It's horrible and deadly, but time heals, or at least softens, most such wounds. What could have convinced the psychiatrists that this time it was permanent?
- hotpotamus 4y agoI know at least one person with a 100% disability rating from the US military for PTSD and have heard it is not unusual.
- jquery 4y agoPeople who’ve never suffered a serious mental illness sometimes drastically underestimate the intensity of the suffering mental illness can cause.
- markoman 4y agoIndeed there are people who physically feel their depression so profoundly that they are barely able to lift themselves from their beds in the morning. Depression has nothing to do with being 'down in the dumps' and has to last more than 2 weeks before it becomes a clinical case. While suicide might seem like a cowardly way out to some, there are other sufferers who choose to take their chances with electro-shock therapy, which has experienced rejuvenated interest over the past 20 years. It should be clear, however, that anyone pursuing it has exhausted all over treatment and is still suffering to some great extent.
- imwillofficial 4y ago
- chasil 4y agoI am a U.S. citizen, and I don't know how I feel about this. Suicide is variously reported to be the tenth leading cause of death. Permitted or not, the numbers are enormous. https://www.healthline.com/health/leading-causes-of-death https://www.healthline.com/health/leading-causes-of-death I do not live in a jurisdiction where assisted suicide is legal. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assisted_suicide_in_the_United_States https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assisted_suicide_in_the_Unit... We can judge it to be barbaric, but we cannot stop it. For as far as I believe, I think we should try to understand it more thoroughly, in the hope of bringing the numbers down. If we are in denial, we may be overlooking those who can be saved.
- JoeAltmaier 4y agoI'm not sure how to think about this either. The statistics show we may be doing OK on this already. Consider: for every suicide death there are 40 that make the attempt but are caught and treated. And nearly 300 that thought about it but didn't (hotline, friend etc intervened?) https://www.cdc.gov/suicide/suicide-data-statistics.html https://www.cdc.gov/suicide/suicide-data-statistics.html
- BrandoElFollito 4y agoI completely agree with you. She had to go though way too many hoops to be able to do whatever she wants with her own life. I am with you that we must have human laws that treat people like adults and not toddlers and facilitate their rightful choices.
- imwillofficial 4y agoSociety has limits on what an adult can and cannot do. Go try to own a nuclear weapon and see what happens. From drugs we put in our bodies to what pets we can own. We as a western society have decided there are limits on what even adults are allowed to do. The line is where we argue. Tia is a different league. Here was a woman that was in a terrible state not known for good choices or good longer term decision making. Add on to that she is on anti depressants that are known to cause suicidal ideation. This is not a platform for a sound choice.
- wwarner 4y agoThis is truly disgusting.
- elric 4y agoAh yes, respecting a suffering woman's choice is apparently "disgusting" now. What's disgusting is that a bunch of terrorists decided to kill and maim hundreds of victims. Your vile response to a young woman's suffering is also pretty high up on the disgusting scale. There's no reason to be rude about an innocent woman's death. Show some respect.
- BrandoElFollito 4y agoI completely agree with you. She had to go though way too many hoops to be able to do whatever she wants with her own life. I am with you that we must have human laws that treat people like adults and not toddlers and facilitate their rightful choices.
- Biganon 4y agoAssisted suicide and euthanasia are absolutely not the same thing. There is huge precedent regarding these issues, especially in Swiss law. Also the mirror is trash.
- bergenty 4y agoHonestly I wish someone gave her ecstasy and maybe some speed to kick her out of her slump. Or maybe something more drastic, a heroin habit to give her a reason to wake up the next day after which she could rehab her way to regular life.
- bitxbitxbitcoin 4y agoDon’t know why you are being downvoted. Something like described should have been an alternative to at least one of the almost dozen antidepressants.
- theGnuMe 4y agoI think some folks think that not every available treatment modality was tried and there's a possibility that one could have worked so euthanasia was perhaps premature. How is that handled inside the ethical framework that governs euthanasia? It must be a consideration.
- AstralStorm 4y agoYou do not understand how these drugs work. MDMA is rather similar to certain SSRI in action, if stronger and shorter lived. Which she was already on. Heroinists with depression tend to shoot a final overdose. The remaining thing to try would be hallucinogens. LSD, psylocibin or perhaps ibogaine. These are different and unpredictable enough to maybe work. And this is a case where, since it is otherwise bad enough, even electroshock therapy could be of value. Since these are way past typical options and probably now banned, they would require special handling. (Assuming VR therapy and standard CBT have been exhausted. And TMS showed no improvement.)
- bergenty 4y agoYou’re never going to be able to recreate the combination of factors it takes to get out of depression in a lab. She could have taken some ecstasy, gone to a rave, met someone and completely changed the trajectory of her life. Same with speed- become temporarily manic and do something completely different. Most heroin addicts die from an overdose, you’re underestimating how much an addict looks forward to their next fix, nothing else matters. I’ve seen this anecdotally many times though anecdotal experiences only hold so much weight. At the end of the day what did she have to lose if she was going to be euthanized anyways. People take drugs to deal with problems and this is a problem. Hell, give her a huge dose of ketamine and put her into a massive k hole, people with depression respond fantastically to that. I would never give hallucinogens to a depressed person, that could be enough hell to break someone’s mind permanently.
- Bystander22 4y agoThis Belgian news article gives more information about her path to the decision to end her life: https://www.vrt.be/vrtnws/nl/2022/10/07/euthanasie-na-aanslagen-shanti/ https://www.vrt.be/vrtnws/nl/2022/10/07/euthanasie-na-aansla... This article says that her first suicide attempt was after she had been sexually assaulted by a fellow patient at the mental hospital where she was being treated: https://meaww.com/shanti-de-corte-2016-brussels-airport-isis-bomb-attack-survivor-euthanized-in-belgium https://meaww.com/shanti-de-corte-2016-brussels-airport-isis...