Merged Euthanasia

[Butter!]

Boy, the idea of extending it to psychiatric distress really gives me a cold feeling inside. It may very well be irrational. But I don't know...

I'm not religious. I know life only has the meaning you give it. But still... Aren't we kind of giving up on human value if doctors are giving people lethal overdoses and stuff because they're distressed? Not because they're terminal, but because they're in mental agony? It just seems different somehow.

Yes, we're all terminal on a long enough timeline. Yes, quality of life is impacted just as much by constant mental pain as constant physical pain. But outside of a diagnosed terminal illness situation, I feel like euthanasia is giving up on hope. Is hope woo?

 

[Babbylonian]

Boy, the idea of extending it to psychiatric distress really gives me a cold feeling inside. It may very well be irrational. But I don't know...

I'm not religious. I know life only has the meaning you give it. But still... Aren't we kind of giving up on human value if doctors are giving people lethal overdoses and stuff because they're distressed? Not because they're terminal, but because they're in mental agony? It just seems different somehow.

Yes, we're all terminal on a long enough timeline. Yes, quality of life is impacted just as much by constant mental pain as constant physical pain. But outside of a diagnosed terminal illness situation, I feel like euthanasia is giving up on hope. Is hope woo?

I think it has to be decided by the individual. I'd absolutely get behind efforts to criminalize encouragement of suicide, and everyone should have access to both physical and mental health care. But when nothing is working, I think we, individually and as a society, need to be able to remove ourselves from the process.

 

[Eddie Dane]

First there is the issue of the Hippocratic oath. Is it fair to ask doctors to end life instead of trying to heal people?

Secondly, end of life care for illnesses like cancer is much improved. Pain control is at its best these days. Terminal cancer sufferers and their loved ones are grateful for any extra time together.

It's actually pretty hard on the doctors.

I saw a news item about this.

Patients often see assisted suicide as a 'service' that they can expect from their GP as their illness becomes critical. But many have great trouble performing or assisting such a procedure.

 

[Eddie Dane]

Helped take care of one of those as well, once. Did not improve the gentleman's standard of living Even with face blown off, he wasn't evidently interested in repeating the matter.

Remember the series Band Of Brothers? I researched the real people in that story. The (real life) Jewish drill instructor went on to become an accountant in NY. He struggled with depression and decided to shoot himself. Blew out his optical nerves with a .22 to the side of the head and spend the remaining 17 years of his life blind in an institution.

That story always stuck with me.

 

[Eddie Dane]

I love this thread! We went from expressing emotions over something that didn't happen to mindreading the dead and speculating what various others were thinking after reading hearsay anecdotes. The scanter the material the stronger the opinion!

I'm just glad to finally have found a website that caters to my kinks.

 

[Minoosh]

I'm stuck on this idea of tying yourself to a tree then setting fire to yourself?
That's terrible.

Apart from the physical complications, you are taking away the choice of your future self to change their mind once they start burning.
That seems to be more than suicide to me.

What strikes me about kayle's description is someone who can't take any more pain then killing themselves in what might be the most painful way possible.

I know of someone who did it that way in front of their kids. (Well, not the tree part.) Yeah, something else going on there IMO.

 

[P.J. Denyer]

There are more than a few serious suicide attempts where the person survives. It's a myth people are all just calling for help.

We had a patient in the first hospital I worked at that blew his face off because he aimed the gun under his chin and angled it wrong. I've seen two other persons in the news who survived similar suicide attempts, one who was glad she survived even though she went from very beautiful to quite disfigured.

But of course there are non-serious attempts that fall in a different category.

If you question the studies you should address the studies, not throw your personal opinion out there about the study populations you imagine they used.

Pointing out that these are people who chose a public place well known for suicide attempts and didn't actually jump is addressing the study. If that isn't the study population they used then fine but I took it from your description rather than 'my imagination'. Seriously why bother if you're going to get your nose out of joint if anyone attempts to discuss it?

 

[P.J. Denyer]

It ain't hard (speaking purely on a mechanical level) to kill yourself. It isn't something you're going to mess up if you're actually serious about doing it. You seem to think I'm treating suicide attempts as a way of "asking for help" as something to be ashamed of or to look down on people for and I'm not, but it does factor into how we conceptualize it when talking about assisted suicide.

I don't think that first sentence is necessarily correct, certainly enough people fail, but i agree on the larger point. In this instance (based on SG's description of the study) we're talking about people who have chosen a situation where intervention is likely, and indeed who have been successfully talked down once. This is a fair degree of self selection.

I have personal experience of finding myself, at a very bad time, crossing a railway bridge and thinking "If I got up there and threatened to jump someone would listen to me and help me", I didn't do it, I had no intention of actually jumping, and the thought shocked me enough to make me change my situation, but I can completely understand someone doing it. Like you I am in no way minimising the pain or desperation of someone in this situation.

ETA: Not suggesting that everyone who is talked down fits into that category, just giving an example.

 

[Cainkane1]

"it was the wrong decision" -- by whom and how do you know?

so someone just should have told her: suffer some more years and you will feel better and forget everything?

and it's not as if teenage suicides is something uncommon so why this upsets some here so much.

It upsets me because there are many other things that could have been done for her. Psychotherapy and that sort of thing. Time would have gone by and while she would never forget what happened to her it would have gotten better with time.

What upsets me about this suicide over other teens killing themselves is that this very young girl had adults help her do it as if suicide was always the proper way to deal with bad things happening to them.

I see a big difference between her suffering and the suffering of older men and women with painful terminal illnesses. She was not hurting physically and anxiety and depression can be controlled medically.

 

[Chanakya]

Perhaps we could compromise, kind of, by thinking of euthanasia via some gradual process (drugs, and/or withholding nutrients, or whatever) that stretches over a fairly long period, a week perhaps, or two, perhaps even a month, over which the patient remains conscious and lucid and fully aware of their impending extinction. If they still show no signs of changing their mind, nor even of the slightest doubt, through that slow gradual conscious approach toward death, well then ...

 

[Bob001]

take a ton of salt if you like and stuff it up somewhere in the middle of your backside. he really ***** did it. do you think I am kidding with smth like that?

It is not unheard-of for murders to be initially ruled suicides, or even accidents. It's not unheard-of for murders to be staged to look like suicides or accidents.
For someone to be found tied to a tree and burned alive sounds like a lynching. I'd like to know some details, like where it happened, who was the victim, who investigated, etc.

 

[cosmicaug]

It upsets me because there are many other things that could have been done for her. Psychotherapy and that sort of thing. Time would have gone by and while she would never forget what happened to her it would have gotten better with time.

What upsets me about this suicide over other teens killing themselves is that this very young girl had adults help her do it as if suicide was always the proper way to deal with bad things happening to them.

I see a big difference between her suffering and the suffering of older men and women with painful terminal illnesses. She was not hurting physically and anxiety and depression can be controlled medically.

You've missed the posts explaining that the story as initially portrayed in English language media is wrong.

I think we could argue that "psychotherapy and that sort of thing" failed her (she's dead, after all) but not because it had not been tried. The account translated in a Reddit thread referenced from one of the posts here paints a picture of someone having gone through that many times. It also mentions instances of being force fed her against her will including one time when they induced a comma in order to do this.

Ultimately, she again chose to refuse water and food and what adults did is respect her refusal of treatment. This is not an actively assisted suicide as various media outlets reported. It's still tragic, obviously, but it is not that.

 

[bluesjnr]

It is not unheard-of for murders to be initially ruled suicides, or even accidents. It's not unheard-of for murders to be staged to look like suicides or accidents.
For someone to be found tied to a tree and burned alive sounds like a lynching. I'd like to know some details, like where it happened, who was the victim, who investigated, etc.

Don't hold your breath.

 

[p0lka]

meh double post please ignore.

 

[p0lka]

Don't hold your breath.

Unless you are tied to a tree, in which case you should, when you exhale it might give you some extra wriggle room

 

[Vixen]

You've missed the posts explaining that the story as initially portrayed in English language media is wrong.

I think we could argue that "psychotherapy and that sort of thing" failed her (she's dead, after all) but not because it had not been tried. The account translated in a Reddit thread referenced from one of the posts here paints a picture of someone having gone through that many times. It also mentions instances of being force fed her against her will including one time when they induced a comma in order to do this.

Ultimately, she again chose to refuse water and food and what adults did is respect her refusal of treatment. This is not an actively assisted suicide as various media outlets reported. It's still tragic, obviously, but it is not that.

Sadly, there are those who are so determined to die, absolutely nothing will stop them.

 

[deadrose]

I can sort of understand the not trying to stop her any more. Sort of. Before my mother successfully killed herself (many years ago), she had tried so many times. She'd been considered mentally unstable enough to get a legal abortion in the early 60's, and had been hospitalized for "exhaustion" more than once.

By the time we reached our teens, her mental state was getting worse, and the attempts were more frequent. She refused all mental health care and self-medicated with alcohol and drugs that she diverted from my dad's medical practice.

You can't comprehend what it's like to live with that, unless you've experienced it. Every attempt at inviting a friend over requires carefully judging her mood. Every phone call when you're away from home puts your heart in your throat. You know that sooner or later, she's going to get the dosage right, or someone won't come by unexpectedly. Every day you live with the grinding misery that you can't help. You can't make them feel better, and either nothing else has made them feel better, or they've refused everything. You know that no matter how much you love them, and no matter how much you try, all they want to do is die.

And then, in my case, one day the phone rang. The dreadful anticipation was over.

You can't make someone want to live. Her parents had lived with years of seeing their beloved child want nothing but death. Nothing they tried had worked. They were at least lucky to be in a place where mental health care is decently covered instead of having annual and lifetime caps on what little care they allow. But none of it was enough to heal her.

 

[Archie Gemmill Goal]

I can sort of understand the not trying to stop her any more. Sort of. Before my mother successfully killed herself (many years ago), she had tried so many times. She'd been considered mentally unstable enough to get a legal abortion in the early 60's, and had been hospitalized for "exhaustion" more than once.

By the time we reached our teens, her mental state was getting worse, and the attempts were more frequent. She refused all mental health care and self-medicated with alcohol and drugs that she diverted from my dad's medical practice.

You can't comprehend what it's like to live with that, unless you've experienced it. Every attempt at inviting a friend over requires carefully judging her mood. Every phone call when you're away from home puts your heart in your throat. You know that sooner or later, she's going to get the dosage right, or someone won't come by unexpectedly. Every day you live with the grinding misery that you can't help. You can't make them feel better, and either nothing else has made them feel better, or they've refused everything. You know that no matter how much you love them, and no matter how much you try, all they want to do is die.

And then, in my case, one day the phone rang. The dreadful anticipation was over.

You can't make someone want to live. Her parents had lived with years of seeing their beloved child want nothing but death. Nothing they tried had worked. They were at least lucky to be in a place where mental health care is decently covered instead of having annual and lifetime caps on what little care they allow. But none of it was enough to heal her.

This is so tragically true that it is almost sad it needs saying. Thank You.

 

[Butter!]

Okay, fine, I was wrong.

Jeez, I never thought I'd feel like a dick for being against teen suicide.

 

[Bob001]

.....
You can't make someone want to live. Her parents had lived with years of seeing their beloved child want nothing but death. Nothing they tried had worked. They were at least lucky to be in a place where mental health care is decently covered instead of having annual and lifetime caps on what little care they allow. But none of it was enough to heal her.

We actually don't know anything about the family dynamics. It's at least possible that their idea of "love" contributed to her illness. A lot of children endure horrible experiences without demanding that they be allowed to die. If the parents were prepared to let her kill herself, it might well be that the appropriate government agency should have taken over her care and treatment.