Exactly. People, even kids, kill themselves because of "lack of perspective". Lack of a (reasonable) future. Lack of any reasonable hope for change. People aren't stupid and mental illnesses (the non-medical ones) don't actually prevent thinking. That means the first thing to realize is that a desire to kill yourself isn't illogical. Maybe it's a mistake but maybe it isn't.
Which of course is terrible and of course absolutely not what society expects of help. Here's this kid. She's broken. Find the miswire in her brain, cut it or something, and bring them back fixed. And then you read the story of the kid. Was "diagnosed" with Autism by a teacher with no psychological skills whatsoever. From that point on systematically increasing repression was used against this kid, and of course as a psychological/social worker you cannot change their situation. That, youth services will not let a psychiatrist do. They need to be fixed and accept whatever "help" other people feel the need to provide, decided by whoever gets put in charge by the government (they "just happen" to never ever be the people who actually take responsibility for the child). That's your only function. Oh and by the way, if you can't do it in 6 weeks (can be up to 16), the kid will be violently taken away by the police, in cuffs, and someone else gets that job. Oh, and if they commit suicide in your clinic, they'll bankrupt you and maybe you'll go to jail. Good luck !
So the problem in this girl's case is not just that her conclusion, that there was no perspective on a better life ... well let's just say it wasn't a particularly stupid or obviously wrong assessment of her situation. The things she didn't have control over weren't getting better over time. And she tolerated being treated like that "for her protection" for at least 3 years ... Do you really feel you'd last that long ? Kids are actually far more resilient than adults when it comes to being suicidal, but enough punishment ("help" provided involuntarily, like in the case being discussed here) will get the better of them soon. Every 3 months you get moved somewhere else, in cuffs, and the next thing is tried on you. That might be good, it might also be 12 weeks in an isolation cell. You just don't know. Hell, because they just take whatever is available right at the moment they move you (because your current placement ends you have to leave, doesn't mean they have somewhere else for you to go). So the social workers, your parents, even the juvenile judge also doesn't know, except perhaps a day or so in advance. Good luck feeling optimistic about your future.
So of course youth services itself was the cause of the lack of perspective. "Safety" for the child, imposing safety on her is what killed her. Escalating to heavier and heavier repression every time. As soon as she worsened in care someone should of course have pressed the abort button, EVEN knowing she was cutting herself or suicidal. Send her home and say she can stay there unless she chooses otherwise. Why ? To prevent doing more damage. To make it clear that her home was still there, and that the situation really is salvageable. But if you as a social worker or psychiatrist take that chance, and the result is that it was too late, and the kid does commit suicide (or worse: their parents or someone they're exposed to back home takes advantage of the situation), you'll be eaten alive by society. So nobody does. Everybody avoids responsibility, and thus taking chances on not treating kids is barely ever done. The odds are actually in favor of doing this. Even people who've tried to commit suicide, only 3% actually follow through with it, meaning the symptom disappears in 97% of cases, which is far better than treatment accomplishes.
About 400 kids are placed (which means locked up against the will of parents and child) "for their safety" for every 1 case of actual abuse in the Netherlands. Social workers build cases against these kids that aren't checked for accuracy (it is an actual policy for them to write down everything they hear, and to never check), there is no defense possible, there are children's rights, but no way to sue child services if they are violated, so there might as well not be. There is no actual appeal process against the youth court (technically there is, but whatever "protection measure" they put forth is always immediately executed, appeal or not, nor is it canceled on a succesfull appeal, it is re-evaluated by the original judge (after, of course, another waiting period). This heavily punishes appeal since if an appeal is filed, no adjustments (such as visitation by your parents, or a friend, or more phone numbers you get to call, or ...) are possible until the appeal is heard, sometimes years later)
It is very clear that at this point the system damages many more kids than it helps.
BUT there is money being handed out. For example, if you have a handicapped kid, and you need help paying for a wheelchair, this is done through youth services, with "pgb" (meaning money that "follows the kid"). Parents can even use this money to pay themselves (very badly I might add, but it's something) for watching the kid if the care required is heavy enough that the kid can't be left alone. Or to get them after school lessons for free. Or ... Also schools, institutions, even things like children's farms can get extra money through the system, if they get "problem" kids assigned to them, and so kids are being forced into it, sometimes by their own parents. But where the real damage is done is where social workers are both being made responsible for deciding on care, and paid for providing care.
The perverse incentive is of course that one can easily see that institutions', schools', social workers', ... optimal strategy is to "treat" kids that are normal to begin with, diagnose them with something like "autism", and "treat" them. How many social workers, how many schools, how many institutions do this ? Hopefully not too many, but it's equally obvious that it's rather unlikely to be zero.
This has resulted in that apparently a solid 11% of Dutch kids have a serious psychiatric problem necessitating professional aid in any one year. Internationally, it's not even 3% (and that number is over 18 years). That number is rising. Just for autism, 2.5% of Dutch kids are diagnosed with it, whereas international numbers are between 0.6% and 1%.
It's so scary to see that our systems are full of misaligned incentives, a classic economics problem. The fucking textbook agent-principal dilemma. And nothing changes. (Or just so very slowly.)
The other aspects, about issues of the system, are of course also valid.
I was raped at age 12. It took me two decades to recover, and I got vastly better support than her.
Lots of tape victims seem to never really get over it. Most of the world seems to not know how to heal that kind of trauma.
I cannot imagine that a single dose of a drug has any hope of fixing something like that. If you cannot trust anyone around you because of a long standing track record of mistreatment of you, taking happy pills to make you happy with this horror show sounds like a really bad idea to me, one that would reduce your ability to adequately self advocate in a dangerous social setting.
I also live with an incurable medical condition that is classified as a dread disease because it so negatively impacts your life.
On the upside, I am getting healthier when the entire world says it cannot be done. As my physical health improves, my suicidal tendencies are trending down because I'm not so extremely miserable 24/7.
On the downside, basically the entire world is openly hostile, openly attacks me for talking about that, openly dismisses me as a lunatic who is making that up, openly discriminates against me over that -- for example, I've had moderators on multiple forums tell me I'm the problem when I got attacked in violation of the rules and I got thrown off instead of the people attacking me -- and on and on. That alone is enough to make things look pretty damn hopeless.
There is no winning here.
And that's for someone miraculously getting well when that's supposed to be impossible. If I actually was facing the steady gruesome decline my condition is supposed to cause where life is horrible torture today and you can count on things just getting steadily worse for all of your tomorrows, I would have killed myself ages ago. There is no fucking way I would fight to survive with such a prognosis.
Many people need solutions for torturous health issues or torturous social problems rooted in the bad behavior of other people. For such people, seeking to tweak their brain chemistry like they are the problem that needs to be fixed is part of the problem.
If it isn't someone you are personally willing to take some responsibility for, as you did with your wife, then I think it is wrong to insist they live.
I'm quite open about my long history of being suicidal and the various underlying reasons why. People on the internet often want to tell me "chin up, tally ho, here's a suicide hotline number." They generally don't want to do anything whatsoever to help with any of the actual underlying problems.
In fact, they usually make me feel like they are merely using me as their "good deed for the day" to make themselves feel like good people. It generally pisses me off and makes me feel crapped all over.
I'm pro right to die, but this article casts light on how very complicated the issue is. I would be horrified to learn that "I got raped and now want to die" is some new standard for helping women kill themselves. I just can't even begin to come up with the words for how mixed my feelings are about this girl's story.