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You need to educate yourself with the science of choice and what happens during depression that changes your ability to make right decisions. Assuming that a de

You need to educate yourself with the science of choice and what happens during depression that changes your ability to make right decisions. Assuming that a depressed person is able to make the right decision is just wrong. How many times did you decide on something and than changed your mind? only this one is irreversible. Depression is curable with right support and medication. There may be few who are hopeless cases but 40000 is a big number and I believe its preventable for good.

lmz 12y ago
Abortion is also irreversible, yet discouraging women who want to abort their pregnancy from doing so is considered in bad taste by most liberals.
- cldellow 12y ago
  More nuance, please! I think most women have thought about abortion to some degree and formed an opinion on whether it's the right choice for them, or under what conditions they would entertain the idea of an abortion versus keeping the child in an unexpected pregnancy. In these cases, you're right: discouraging women who have thought about the process would be seen as in bad taste. But what if the woman was being pressured to abort (or to keep) the child by outside pressure? Then intervention would be seen as supporting the woman, not as interfering, and it'd be in good taste. IMO, suicide is very similar. A large proportion of suicide attempts are people who go on to regret it and successfully seek treatment. I don't think it's too much of a leap from that to the idea that a large proportion of suicides themselves are being done for the wrong reasons, i.e. the "outside pressure" of a brain that is suffering a mental illness.
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
  - lmz 12y ago
    I think most people who choose to commit suicide have given it a good few months or more of thinking. How long do people have to suffer in order for you to say "this person's done enough thinking about it, he can go"?
    - Jtsummers 12y ago
      > I think most people who choose to commit suicide have given it a good few months or more of thinking. [citation needed] Most seems unlikely to me, at least for first attempts.
    - anigbrowl 12y ago
      Speaking from experience, I disagree. I'm in favor of a generalized right to commit suicide as a fundamental ground of self-determination, but it can often be a compulsive rather a considered action; furthermore it can be based on a fundamentally irrational discounting of the future ('I'll never be happy again, my life can only get worse') which may be merely temporary or the result of developmental delays/deficits in handling emotional swings.
  - thaumasiotes 12y ago
    > A large proportion of suicide attempts are people who go on to regret it and successfully seek treatment. A different conclusion you could draw from this are that the failed attempts failed because they weren't really trying to kill themselves, a sort of regretting-in-advance, if you will. I feel pretty safe in saying that successful suicide attempts don't go on to regret it, and it's not at all obvious that the failures and the successes are examples of the same phenomenon.
- ux-app 12y ago
  that's a horrible comparison
  - lmz 12y ago
    And why is that? It's her body and she has the right to remove the fetus in her. Why does she not have the right to put a tankful of Nitrogen in her lungs if she chooses to do so?
    - ux-app 12y ago
      Your statement implied that there was much in common with the two scenarios. There isn't. Therefore it's a bad comparison. fwiw I'm pro choice on both issues.
      - lmz 12y ago
        And I am too. I am not anti abortion I am pro voluntary suicide. "Just go to therapy it will be better" vs "Give the baby a chance you might grow to love it". How is it any different?
        ux-app 12y ago
        Suicide in otherwise healthy individuals is (imo) a mental health issue. Abortion is not. Your initial comment that I responded to implied that discouraging suicide is or should be in bad taste. I don't agree with this statement. My position is predicated on the assumption that life is better than death.
        lmz 12y ago
        My position sees death as a permanent zero. If your life is continually in the negatives and you have to work every day to keep it there then putting it at zero permanently without any more effort required seems a good deal to me.
        12y ago
grimtrigger 12y ago
> right decision You're asserting that not only a right decision exists, but that you are more aware of the right decision than the person actually involved.
- asolove 12y ago
  I am married to a person who came very close to suicide and might have gone through with it except for the relative difficulty and the intervention of other people against her will. After short-term medication, long-term therapy, and some lifestyle changes, we live mostly normal lives and have two happy children. So you're damn right I'm asserting that there's a right decision and that I knew better than her in her chemically imbalanced state. Now, this is one scenario that has a happy ending. I don't know what I would think about someone chronically and incurably suffering. But the idea of absolutely unfettered access to assisted suicide scares me.
lhnz 12y ago
Were you previously depressed yourself or are you just trotting out the party line? I have been depressed before. While it's true that some people can take medication and receive platitudes and coping methods on how to deal with the facts of a sad and sorry life, this won't "cure" everybody. What about those people that suffer for 10+ years? --- In regards to the typical statements that depressed people have to hear day-upon-day: When I was depressed (and I was very depressed for around 5 years) I knew that based on what I saw around me, I could probably expect to stop becoming depressed at some point of my life. However, it greatly annoyed me when people said "suicide is a permanent solution to a temporary problem" because when you've felt particularly bad for years and years, you're not dealing with something which is so easy to change, and it's in fact far more permanent than many things in your life. Time stretches without pleasure. Days are long but years are unimaginably scary. Another statement which I would hear a lot was the idea that you shouldn't kill yourself because your family, friends and community need you. It doesn't necessarily sounds nice to a depressed person. Here's how I used to rationalise it: I was committing a selfless act of martyrdom by continuing to exist without pleasure - every day I would be nailed to a cross and for their pleasure would hang there on a side of a hill they didn't care to visit. "What did they get out of my suffering?!"
- brazzy 12y ago
  You seem to mix up three different points/views, which weakens your argument a lot: - The word "platitudes" and the scare quotes around "cure" indicate that blanket skepticism towards depression therapy of the kind I see from conspiracy nuts. You disqualify yourself from serious discussion that way. - "coping methods on how to deal with the facts of a sad and sorry life" indicates that you believe depression is caused by external rather than internal factors. This runs very much against well established knowledge. If you suffer from external factors, those should be improved, and it's primarily up to you to do that. - In cases of depression where therapy is ineffective for some reason, should this be considered morally equivalent to someone wishing to die to end their suffering from cancer, MS, etc.? This is absolutely worth discussing. The main problem I see is that we know that depression generaly is curable - so at what point do you decide that a given case is not?

lmz 12y ago

Abortion is also irreversible, yet discouraging women who want to abort their pregnancy from doing so is considered in bad taste by most liberals.

cldellow 12y ago
More nuance, please! I think most women have thought about abortion to some degree and formed an opinion on whether it's the right choice for them, or under what conditions they would entertain the idea of an abortion versus keeping the child in an unexpected pregnancy. In these cases, you're right: discouraging women who have thought about the process would be seen as in bad taste. But what if the woman was being pressured to abort (or to keep) the child by outside pressure? Then intervention would be seen as supporting the woman, not as interfering, and it'd be in good taste. IMO, suicide is very similar. A large proportion of suicide attempts are people who go on to regret it and successfully seek treatment. I don't think it's too much of a leap from that to the idea that a large proportion of suicides themselves are being done for the wrong reasons, i.e. the "outside pressure" of a brain that is suffering a mental illness.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- lmz 12y ago
  I think most people who choose to commit suicide have given it a good few months or more of thinking. How long do people have to suffer in order for you to say "this person's done enough thinking about it, he can go"?
  - Jtsummers 12y ago
    > I think most people who choose to commit suicide have given it a good few months or more of thinking. [citation needed] Most seems unlikely to me, at least for first attempts.
  - anigbrowl 12y ago
    Speaking from experience, I disagree. I'm in favor of a generalized right to commit suicide as a fundamental ground of self-determination, but it can often be a compulsive rather a considered action; furthermore it can be based on a fundamentally irrational discounting of the future ('I'll never be happy again, my life can only get worse') which may be merely temporary or the result of developmental delays/deficits in handling emotional swings.
- thaumasiotes 12y ago
  > A large proportion of suicide attempts are people who go on to regret it and successfully seek treatment. A different conclusion you could draw from this are that the failed attempts failed because they weren't really trying to kill themselves, a sort of regretting-in-advance, if you will. I feel pretty safe in saying that successful suicide attempts don't go on to regret it, and it's not at all obvious that the failures and the successes are examples of the same phenomenon.
ux-app 12y ago
that's a horrible comparison
- lmz 12y ago
  And why is that? It's her body and she has the right to remove the fetus in her. Why does she not have the right to put a tankful of Nitrogen in her lungs if she chooses to do so?
  - ux-app 12y ago
    Your statement implied that there was much in common with the two scenarios. There isn't. Therefore it's a bad comparison. fwiw I'm pro choice on both issues.
    - lmz 12y ago
      And I am too. I am not anti abortion I am pro voluntary suicide. "Just go to therapy it will be better" vs "Give the baby a chance you might grow to love it". How is it any different?
      - ux-app 12y ago
        Suicide in otherwise healthy individuals is (imo) a mental health issue. Abortion is not. Your initial comment that I responded to implied that discouraging suicide is or should be in bad taste. I don't agree with this statement. My position is predicated on the assumption that life is better than death.
        lmz 12y ago
        My position sees death as a permanent zero. If your life is continually in the negatives and you have to work every day to keep it there then putting it at zero permanently without any more effort required seems a good deal to me.
        12y ago

grimtrigger 12y ago

> right decision You're asserting that not only a right decision exists, but that you are more aware of the right decision than the person actually involved.

asolove 12y ago
I am married to a person who came very close to suicide and might have gone through with it except for the relative difficulty and the intervention of other people against her will. After short-term medication, long-term therapy, and some lifestyle changes, we live mostly normal lives and have two happy children. So you're damn right I'm asserting that there's a right decision and that I knew better than her in her chemically imbalanced state. Now, this is one scenario that has a happy ending. I don't know what I would think about someone chronically and incurably suffering. But the idea of absolutely unfettered access to assisted suicide scares me.

lhnz 12y ago

Were you previously depressed yourself or are you just trotting out the party line? I have been depressed before. While it's true that some people can take medication and receive platitudes and coping methods on how to deal with the facts of a sad and sorry life, this won't "cure" everybody. What about those people that suffer for 10+ years? --- In regards to the typical statements that depressed people have to hear day-upon-day: When I was depressed (and I was very depressed for around 5 years) I knew that based on what I saw around me, I could probably expect to stop becoming depressed at some point of my life. However, it greatly annoyed me when people said "suicide is a permanent solution to a temporary problem" because when you've felt particularly bad for years and years, you're not dealing with something which is so easy to change, and it's in fact far more permanent than many things in your life. Time stretches without pleasure. Days are long but years are unimaginably scary. Another statement which I would hear a lot was the idea that you shouldn't kill yourself because your family, friends and community need you. It doesn't necessarily sounds nice to a depressed person. Here's how I used to rationalise it: I was committing a selfless act of martyrdom by continuing to exist without pleasure - every day I would be nailed to a cross and for their pleasure would hang there on a side of a hill they didn't care to visit. "What did they get out of my suffering?!"

brazzy 12y ago
You seem to mix up three different points/views, which weakens your argument a lot: - The word "platitudes" and the scare quotes around "cure" indicate that blanket skepticism towards depression therapy of the kind I see from conspiracy nuts. You disqualify yourself from serious discussion that way. - "coping methods on how to deal with the facts of a sad and sorry life" indicates that you believe depression is caused by external rather than internal factors. This runs very much against well established knowledge. If you suffer from external factors, those should be improved, and it's primarily up to you to do that. - In cases of depression where therapy is ineffective for some reason, should this be considered morally equivalent to someone wishing to die to end their suffering from cancer, MS, etc.? This is absolutely worth discussing. The main problem I see is that we know that depression generaly is curable - so at what point do you decide that a given case is not?