The world we live in, where this news travels all over the globe, and we get to argue about the death of a girl on the internet.
Funny times, to say the least.
I’ve been in and out of therapy and on and off meds for 32 years, nothing has helped, I wish this was an option. God speed to her.
I love you username
Thanks
“People think that when you’re mentally ill, you can’t think straight, which is insulting,” she told the Guardian.
So much this. I’ve had so many people tell me that when I tell them that I don’t see a way into the future and I want them to leave me the fuck alone, it actually means that I want more help. No, you donkey, it doesn’t. It means leave me alone.
Bonus points when they are coming up with “ideas for my future” that are just genuinely unappealing to me and are then livid when I say no. Do they really think that going on a vacation or changing my job was not something I already thought about and discarded because I know it would not help? Nah, I’m ill, so I also must be stupid. “You always just say no. I am trying to help and you always just say no.” Thanks for realizing that you are not helping me but just want to feel good about yourself.
I don’t know about your personal situation, and it may be different for whatever you are suffering with, however the part you quoted is true for a lot of cases.
Having just looked after my wife through a period of ~3 years really severe depression I’ve seen it first hand, it completely changed her personality and outlook and she was saying all kinds of stuff she’s quite embarrassed by now. She genuinely couldn’t think straight at all or see any way out, and in that moment if offered the choice to die she might have taken it (a fact she is quite scared by now, having mostly recovered).
Similar story with my brother, who has bipolar… when he’s manic he has an absolute inability to hold a train of thoughts together for longer than 30 seconds. When he’s depressed it’s absolutely awful. He’s now stable and enjoying his life.
I’m not arguing that this shouldn’t be an option for some very extreme chronic conditions, but it’s obviously complicated.
I disagree with her decision for a few reasons but I’ll defend her right to choose.
There are always going to be people who don’t want to be here anymore for whatever reason, and so the government needs to provide a humane way of dealing with these situations.
Like with abortion, access to controlled procedures with trained professionals reduces harm. Restricting access to safe procedures will cause more harm than it prevents.
Definitely sad. Possibly the wrong choice for her, possibly the right choice, but it’s her choice to make despite how I might feel about it.
I hope she finds the peace she didn’t have in life.
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I used to think that, and then I smoked some space dust and now I’m not sure anymore.
Is space dust what the kids are calling PCP these days?
DMT, PCP isn’t really my thing
Never tried it, just know it was called Angel Dust at one point
And that’s perhaps the most peaceful peace. A peace only nothingness can bring.
Nothing is a peace.
Amazing
“Nothing” is peace for some people.
Asking as an atheist myself: what is “nothing”?
What do you remember about before you were born?
Lots, see another reply I’ve made
That’s a pedantic way to answer a question that you understand the purpose of, but are choosing to answer it hyper literally. So, I’ll respond hyper literally. You don’t remember anything about before you were born because you weren’t there to experience it. You’re recalling scientific theories and stories passed down through the years about historic events that took place before your birth.
The question again since you want to be hyper literal is “what do you remember about ‘your life’ before you were born?”. It’s a thought experimemt to make you think about the totality and finite of nothingness.
I get what you meant by the question but I’m trying to demonstrate that it is impossible for us to conceptualize what nothingness is without something. It’s a philosophical issue that science can’t answer. You’re welcome to whatever beliefs and answers to the question you like, but without a way to falsify it, that’s all it is. A belief* (edited correction to autocorrect). Not scientific truth.
Further edit: just to be sure I’m clear, you’ve asked me to imagine what life was like before I was born, thereby pointing to my birth, which is something. My life is something. I don’t know what life would be like without
Beige. Forever.
Remember the 13 billion years before you were born? More of that.
Yes, I remember parts of it because I enjoy learning about history. But I’m remembering something, which is not nothing.
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But that requires me to imagine something, which is not nothing
This should be a standard option at annual physicals. Skip the BP check I just want out.
I feel sorry for her partner watching your loved one die is fucking brutal.
Hope they get supported in the aftermath.
I would never take that right away from someone, but I’m very sad nothing else worked for her. 29 just feels so young to have to exit, so many chances for experiences left.
I’ve had those depressive thoughts, I’ve fought self harm and depression. I have mostly gotten past it and during the period, I don’t think I ever saw light at the end of the tunnel.
I’m glad she is able to get the relief she needs. I couldn’t imagine putting someone through the turmoil that I had during my lowest points. It’s sad, but it’s okay for things to be sad in life. I’m glad she is able to have frank discussions on her desires and her wellbeing. It’s going to be hard for her partner, friends, and family, but it would be so much worse and so traumatic if she didn’t have help or had to hide the desires until she took her own life regardless of the laws.
It’s going to be hard for her partner, friends, and family, but it would be so much worse and so traumatic if she didn’t have help or had to hide the desires until she took her own life regardless of the laws.
I’m not sure that’s true. Losing someone to suicide is in itself quite traumatic. One relief many people have is when they wrap their head around how a self destructive impulse in the heat of an especially devastating moment could have led to it. But living with the fact that your daughter/wife/sister/friend very consciously decided she would rather be dead than to share in this life with you - that’s tough. It’s not unusual with relatives of suicide victims to struggle with feelings of intense anger towards the person they lost, which in turn can lead to feelings of guilt and shame. It’s hard to work through something like that. And I don’t think it gets any easier if the circumstances are as emphasised as in this case.
I think there are very valid use cases for assisted suicide. Personally I doubt that depression is one of them, because suicidality is such an inextricable part of the disorder itself. At the end of the day this is a suicide, just with extra steps and a stamp of approval by a national agency. The people surviving her will not only have to work through the fact of her suicide but process the official approval as well.
The only advantage to a “regular” suicide I can think of is avoiding the trauma of the person finding you. (Although there are probably ways around that anyway.) But I guess she has her reasons to have chosen this specific method and setting.
Had my diagnosed mental health condition hadn’t mellowed with age, I wouldn’t be able to have a functional life or hold a job. I support this woman making her own decisions about whether she can bear the burden of existence.
I am all about giving people the possibility to put an end to their lives and there are plenty of people who are living almost unbearable lives, full of pain and suffering. And I know it is wrong to judge people without being in their shoes but, part of me is refusing to accept that a person who is apparently, young and physically healthy and in a relationship where the other partner obviously cares about her is so depressive and miserable that she wants to die.
So I have mixed feelings in this particular case and I feel sorry for her family and partner, who I am sure really wanted her to get better.
Nevertheless, I am happy that there are still doctors who are willing to take such cases because I can imagine how hard and psychologically challenging it would be to work with those people and they have my full respect.
Yeah, especially with curable and non progressive conditions
Did you read the article? She’s been in intensive care for her mental health for a decade. This wasn’t some spur of the moment decision. Its taken 10 years to get to this point. To state that mental illnesses are curable and non-progressive is pure ignorance and you would do yourself well to learn how poor the prognosis is for people with severe mental illness. There isn’t a cure. You never feel whole or normal. Medication is a shot in the dark most of the time. Therapy doesn’t help everybody. Some people are truly and completely untreatable, and she is one of those people
to state that mental illnesses are curable is pure ignorance
Lol
Name a single curable mental illness.
I’ll help you out: there aren’t any. Some can be managed and worked around in day to day life. Some people may achieve a reasonable quality of life, but their illness will never totally disappear
I am a psychotherapist. Mental disorders are often curable. Our mind, our psyche, our brain develop and change in every waking moment, one small increment at a a time. A good indication for this are mental disorders themselves. Their emergence is proof of our mind’s capability to change - for the worse, in this case, but change nonetheless.
So in theory it should always be possible to change the other way around, to get significantly better to the point where the disorder is no longer present. (If you define a episode of mental health and wellbeing after a depressive episode as “managing” a still present disorder, then sure, they are incurable, but that’s because that’s part of your definition to begin with. The symptoms of a mental disorder can definitely disappear.) A more difficult question would be if our surroundings and social realities allow for so much change to take place. And sometimes, unfortunately, this isn’t possible, since our society can be a fucked up place and economic constrains have an unavoidable influence on our capability to shape our own path.
Still, in my personal experience working with hundreds of patiens in different therapeutic setting, most people can (and do) reclaim their mental health, given supportive surroundings and adequate treatment. From your pessimistic outlook at mental health I will cautiously assume that you don’t have those widely available to you. In this case you’d be somewhat right: Under such circumstances the possibilities to cure mental disorders are limited. Another complicating factor might be mental disorders themselves though. The feeling of “this is never going to get better, I’ll never be happy again” is one most people with depressive disorders know all to well. So if we ask the affected people directly we will often arrive at the conclusion that the disorders are in fact incurable. And that’s a horrible feeling for sure. I find it important to remember though that what our thoughts tell us in those dark episodes isn’t necessarily the truth. In this case I’d argue it isn’t. I’ve seen too many examples of the opposite, luckily.
This isn’t a problem with “my” definition of cure. I’m using the commonly understood definition. If someone is successfully managing their type 1 diabetes with insulin and a healthy diet we don’t say they’re cured. They still have diabetes. If they stopped taking their meds and ate a ton of carb heavy foods they’d wind up in the hospital in a matter of days.
Same goes with mental illness. If you stop taking your meds, going to therapy, etc. your mental state will decline again. They’re still mentally ill, they’re just managing it.
Perhaps some people have acute moments of distress to the point where it’s clinically significant and treatment helps them weather that moment. Eventually they may return to their baseline of not needing drugs or therapy. But given the context of this thread (a woman killing herself after a decade of unsuccessful treatment) I figured it was fair to assume chronic mental illness. Something to the tune of major depression, bipolar disorders, schizophrenia, etc.
The word cure isn’t a fluid term to me or most people. It’s something that connotes permentant relief of a person’s signs and symptoms of a given illness. Something that often isn’t the case for mental illness
I can’t understand why so many people are against someone dying with dignity. This is a form of harm reduction for not just the patient, but also their loved ones, and society in general.
Nobody wants to see their loved ones suffer endlessly or needlessly, and this is also a whole lot less traumatic than people committing suicide. Nobody wants the last memory of their loved ones to be the scene of their (potentially messy) suicide.
And that’s not to mention the trauma inflicted on bystanders for some of the more public suicide methods (not to mention that jumping to your death or intentionally walking into/driving into traffic has a decent chance of physically injuring or killing said bystanders).
If this process is undertaken with care and compassion, it’s far less likely to be traumatizing to all involved. And it prevents “spur of the moment” decisions, like many successful suicides are.
Nobody wants to see their loved ones suffer endlessly or needlessly, and this is also a whole lot less traumatic than people committing suicide.
This is people committing suicide, though.
That’s both debatable on a semantic level (is it really suicide if it’s assisted?) and not how I intended the use of the term.
What I tried to say is that this option is less traumatic than non-assisted options for ending your existence and comes with less risk of injury to bystanders to boot.
How is it debatable? If you’re claiming it’s not suicide because it’s assisted, then by that logic it’s murder.
It’s one thing to support the policy, it’s another thing to misrepresent what the policy is. Suicide is still suicide. Is it less disruptive to society? Absolutely. Is it a good policy? Debatably. But it is still suicide? Indisputably. Support it if you will but don’t go around saying that it’s “less traumatic than suicide” as if it isn’t a form of suicide.
We have a great term for the realm between murder and suicide - assistance in dying.
It bridges the gap between the definition of murder (where one party unalives the other party against their consent) and suicide (where one party unalives themselves with intent) by having the person looking to be unalived explicitly expires their intent and consent for the other party to assist them.
I feel as if you’re trying to create a false equivalency to undermine the validity of this option.
And as to whether this is less traumatic than suicide - you have got to be kidding or you’ve never had to deal with the reality of someone committing suicide versus someone choosing assistance in dying.
One generally involves a lot of shock and someone finding a dead body in some state, the other is generally a peaceful affair where loved ones say their goodbyes before the person peacefully falls asleep for the last time.
They are nowhere near the same thing for the survivors and you claiming otherwise is an insult to both. And if you can’t see the difference between these two options I’m frankly done debating this with you.
See, the difference is that I’m not looking at how clean or messy the suicide is, I’m looking at the fact that a suicide occurred. I would have much more respect for you and your position if you were willing to look it in the eye and call it what it is, instead of hiding behind these nonsense euphemisms.
At no point did I make any claims regarding the trauma involved, except to say, “Is it less disruptive to society? Absolutely.” The exact opposite of the position you ascribed to me, in other words.
But trauma and shock are merely side effects of suicide. Symptoms that exist to reflect the awfulness of the event. If a person kills themselves on a deserted island, no one is traumatized or shocked by it, but it is still, factually, a suicide.
I don’t see why you’re reacting so strongly to a simple clarification in terminology. Or rather, I’m beginning to see why, but I wish I didn’t.
That’s not entirely honest - you’re also trying to argue that having this option is not a good or valid option (you called “debatable”) and are trying to steer the conversation by creating a false equivalency between assistance in dying and suicide, which are not the same thing.
I fully agree with your example - someone unaliving themselves on a deserted island committed suicide. Never said they didn’t.
What I said, and what you’re conveniently omitting, is that suicide is an act by an individual, there is no other party to the unaliving. This is not the case in assistance in dying, and there’s very good legal reason why we consider these distinct from eachother, and from murder (to your earlier point).
Even if we forget the traumatic angle I brought up earlier, surely you must see the difference between an act that involves one party and an act that involves two parties with express intent and consent.
What you’re trying to do is the same as arguing masturbation and sex are the same thing because they end with the same result (orgasm).
What the fuck is “unaliving”. Are you saying that unironically? If so, it’s staggeringly Orwellian.
That’s not entirely honest - you’re also trying to argue that having this option is not a good or valid option (you called “debatable”)
Saying it’s “debatable” is not the same thing as asserting it’s not a good or valid option. It just means that whether it’s good or valid hasn’t been conclusively established.
Assisted suicide is a form or suicide that is assisted. The thing that makes it different between it and regular suicide is that someone else is assisting. You’ve chosen the example of masturbation vs sex because it’s one of the few analogies that would work for you. Tandem skiing is skiing. Assisted murder is murder. Skydiving with an instructor is skydiving.
The onus is on you to present why the addition of an assistant meaningfully changes the nature of the act.
surely you must see the difference between an act that involves one party and an act that involves two parties with express intent and consent.
I see no such thing. Solo suicide involves intent, and there is no need for consent because there isn’t a second person involved. How on earth would the addition of a second person make it meaningfully different? Are you refusing to say the reason because you think it’s obvious, or because it doesn’t exist?
“Less traumatic than violent, ad-hoc suicide” perhaps?
There’s no such thing as “non-violent” suicide. Maybe, “less traumatic than non-assisted suicide” or “regular suicide,” or “suicide that isn’t state approved,” or any number of other phrasings so long as a spade is still called a spade.
You don’t want people jumping in front of a train, but what do you think would happen if this concept were fully embraced by the American for-profit insurance industry? I’m imagining taking my mom to a doctor’s appointment for an expensive treatment and finding tasteful brochures for dying with dignity helpfully placed around the office.
I’m absolutely worried this will get taken advantage of in the US’ hellscape that is their healthcare system, but that doesn’t mean the concept is without merit.
It’s like arguing that cars should not be available for purchase because someone might use one irresponsibly, while forgetting their utility outside of abuse.
In a healthcare system that optimizes outcome instead of profit, having the option to allow someone to choose to end their suffering should not be considered a bad thing.
You haven’t seen all the hospice brochures? You don’t even have to imagine - it’s like the P.C. version of assisted suicide for old people.
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And it prevents “spur of the moment” decisions, like many successful suicides are.
It may prevent some, but at least some of the ones experiencing acute issues will still go for the immediate option. The bureaucracy of it will add a layer that I suspect will deter some. If it takes months or years, people are just going to find their own way.
I’m not suggesting that we just help any person right off the street. I think the government has duty of care once they are involved. I’m just saying the reality is that many will still choose not to take this alternative path.
I can fix her!
Imagine thinking your life belongs to you, and then having to get permission to end it without suffering
You’re asking someone else to take your life and expect them to do so no questions asked…?
There are in fact many questions asked, and any doctor can refuse for any reason.
Yes, hence kofe’s skeptical and maybe sarcastic question
I was genuinely asking, more so of the person that’s skeptical of having to get permission. I’m glad it seems to be an ethical requirement
/s
There are other options other than this one that requires permission. The article mentions her reasons to choose this method.
From the article:
She had thought about taking her own life but the violent death by suicide of a schoolfriend and its impact on the girl’s family deterred her.
Whether we agree with her or not, it’s her decision.
Jumping off bridges is free, no?
Clearly, this is about a more complex social issue/concern.
I think it’s technically illegal in most countries (suicide I mean, not specifically the bridge variety).
