I'm bipolar, and when I was untreated I would frequently (as on every other day) spend hours locked in a doom-spiral of self hatred, incapable of breaking myself out of it. I could recognize what was going on at some level, and that if I were pulled out of the spiral I would be fine, but in the moment trying to escape that pain seemed to only have one solution, even if I knew I normally wouldn't want to die.
I would basically have to try and hold myself together long enough for my wife to find me and help me back to sanity. Each time I got a little closer to failing. Getting access to medication was life changing.
I am enterally thankful she took away deadly instruments, encouraged me to find reasons to live and recover, and ultimately seek treatment. Whereas you would have just left me to irrevocably take my own life in response to temporary problem that had a medical solution readily available.
:)
For the record, I never wrote, said, or claimed that, and your claim is inaccurate. Please refrain from making false claims about me.
As for the concern about basic rights, I fundamentally agree. For some people, perhaps, they will never get better and in those cases we should have a path to assisted suicide. In all cases, we should do our best to help suicidal people, who are ultimately suffering a lot. I don't think most people who are suicidal want to specifically die more than they want an end to their suffering, to which they see no realistic alternative other than death (which I assure you remains quite scary even when you're really depressed.) I think giving them an escape other than death is morally obligatory and humane, where it's possible.
Is this actually true? I know it's said quite often, but there are countries with much much higher suicide rates where firearms aren't nearly as ubiquitous. Eg Lithuania.
The amount of people who die to suicide is higher in the US because you are much more likely to actually die if you use a gun to commit suicide than other common methods. Higher access to guns increases the rate of people who successfully kill themselves. (Which is probably a bad thing. In general those who survive suicide attempts are happy that they lived.)
The rates in the US are high because of access to guns. It's well understood in public health that easy access to means and methods is one of the factors driving high rates of death.
The rates in Lithuania are high because of a number of other factors -- high alcohol misuse probably being important. Also, there are plenty of guns in Lithuania, and firearms are one of the most frequently used methods.
In general one usually gets more meaningful results when a) comparing geographically and/or culturally similar countries for things like these. E.G the UK has half the mortality rate of the US, Canada and the EU have 2/3 of the US rate. And b) compare trends, not single values. E.G. US rates are rising (which I as a layman would interpret as speaking against the firearms thesis), while the rates of Lithuana and Japan are falling.
This is particularly true if they call you during the bad 1% and directly ask you to stop them from doing the thing.
Consider instead the case where you're a recovering gambling addict who's asked me to make sure you don't gamble again. One night I find you in the pokies room, so I take your wallet and tell you I'll give it back tomorrow morning. I agree that this is theft and possibly morally wrong; however, I don't agree that it breaches your right to self-determination, since most of the time you seem pretty determined not to gamble.
I disagree with the claim that many suicides are like that, I don't think the suicide from the article was like that, and the word "consistently" is doing a lot of heavy lifting.
Intuitively I feel that it's like two different people are making decisions about the one body, and the finality of suicide means the suicidal part of someone is wiping out the future for both, and should thus be prevented.
Again, though, the majority of suicide victims aren't suicidal for large periods of their lives. I feel that in the cases where someone is only briefly suicidal during the worst troughs of mood, the suicidal 1% of a life would wipe out the non-suicidal 99%, which is a monumental loss to inflict.
The right to self-determination derives from an assumption of someone being in a clear state of mind, that's why we have plenty of conditions under which we withdraw that right.
But the 38 year old husband, the subject of the article, who was in an unstable mental state to the point where his wife felt threatened and left for the safety of their children was certainly not in command of his mental faculties.
Someone who is schizophrenic and bipolar and experiences a psychotic break after drastically changing their medication regimen is not in a sound state of mind, and they would be the first to admit it once their condition improves.
First you said they can't do it because they're mentally incapable of making the choice, now you're discussing whether a suicide is "clearly defensible". It doesn't matter if a suicide is "clearly defensible" or not. People don't have to defend their choices to you. That's the point of having the freedom to choose.
Where did you get that idea? This happened in the UK, which has a public health system.
Well, that's an enormous 'if'. Yeah, maybe it's different in that case. But it's not the common case.
Anyway, I didn't consent to being born, why shouldn't I be able to choose to stop living?