No one should be forced to survive.
If you think that physical health is the only indicator of quality of life then you have no idea how mental health works.
Its my damn switch, I should be able to switch it off when I want.
So the mentally ill are forced to suffer because of somebody’s saviour complex… There are checks and balances in the system. The plan was to not just kill whoever walked through the door. Guess what? Not one life will be saved every person whether they are blessed with a compassionate death or not will die. NOBODY IS GETTING OUT ALIVE. What we are talking about is how much we are willing to let you suffer as you die.
Hot-take: It should be open to any adult for any reason they choose.
People are forced into the world without any choice. They should have the choice to leave it peacefully when they want.
The problem is allowing the government control over that.
what, ? that’s what this article is about, The Canadian Government is asserting control over Canadian citizens choice.
Kind of goes against the entire point of medicine and being a doctor if you just make it part of the field to facilitate people killing themselves for any reason they want to. MAID exists for a reason. People who want to kill themselves because of mental illness are sick and the therapy is not to let them do it. It is different when people are in pain and actively dying.
I don’t think this is as hot of a take as you may imagine. However, I think that the implementation is the tricky part.
If you think about it, anyone can try to die by suicide at any time they want, and there’s really very little others can do about it. There’s a thousand and one grim ways to accomplish it. In a way, providing people who really want to do it with a safe and effective process to accomplish it is, in my opinion, kind of humane.
That said, what is the safe and effective process? Who determines what is safe and effective? Personally, I’d like doctors involved, but most doctors (any one that I want to trust, at least) have taken an oath to do no harm, and they tend to take that pretty seriously. Is the government going to force doctors to perform euthanasia for anyone at all who wants it? That hardly seems like a good idea.
So the hows and whys are a bit trickier once you start digging into them, in my opinion. For context, I’ve dealt with major depression in the past and have spent (a short) time in a psychiatric ward after an attempt. I’m kind of sympathetic to both sides on this issue.
Idk why there is a debate on a safe and effective way to kill someone. Its inert gas asphyxiation every time. As a welder, its been a threat my entire career. Its scary because its so easy. You go to work, you get a little tired, you doze off, and you die. Thats it. Your body has no way to tell the difference between oxygen, nitrogen, and argon.
Gas chamber scare quotes
forced
Way too big a word. Nobody is forcing anybody, its just nature doing its thing and last I checked, fetuses aren’t exactly capable of making decision, less even being forced to make one.
I do agree that everyone should be able to exit when they choose so but the human mind being what it is a lot of times a lot of people temporarily feel they want to exit, and with some help or medication, they want to stay. The road out should be taken slowly and with care and dignity, and definitely not be an “I want out! Okay!”
It’s not a suicide booth. There’s a whole process.
I don’t think there’s a simple one-size-fits-all answer for everyone here.
What the majority of people with mental illness need is better treatment options. That they don’t have to pay for out-of-pocket because the government doesn’t fund it, or travel for hours in order to access. Fixing this is, to be honest, more important than extending MAID beyond serious physical conditions at the moment, and would help more people. But it’s expensive and difficult.
On the gripping hand, there is such a thing as treatment-resistant mental illness. If someone has tried everything, and nothing works, and there are no new treatments on the horizon, then denying them the only relief possible is cruel. This small percentage of mentally ill people should be permitted access to MAID, after due consideration of their medical history.
The issue with this is that we have MAID because of the courts, not because it was legislated. This will certainly be taken to court and based on previous rulings has a very high chance of being deemed unconstitutional.
This is cruel.
No? Good on them for barring mental illness as a sole reason.
I live with Persistent Depressive Disorder and it’s admittedly been frustrating seeing people essentially telling people like myself that we should do the thing we’re unhealthily telling ourselves to do anyways.
It literally comes off as people trying to tell me I’m lesser than and should kill myself, but with the veneer of continuing to look progressive.
I have my own struggles.
I have attempted twice on my own.
I don’t currently have a desire to.
But removing a dignified and personally chosen means of exiting leaves only the other, more messy ways.
Personally, i believe this option should be available to everyone for any reason.
There’s a guy in our town with no arms or legs. Gets around on a skateboard. Shot himself in the woods during winter but was found and given medical attention. But not before he lost all 4 limbs to frostbite. I’ve never spoken to him. Seems to have a pretty positive disposition given his circumstances.
Also have a bro whose gf slit her wrists in the tub. She survived. Hella trauma all around. Still on the waiting list for surgery to fix her hands years later.
Had a total karen of a neighbour once…Hard not to be callous cuz she was genuinely unpleasant to interact with but found out from my roommate that several years back she came home and found her son had hung himself in the closet at like 17. Who knows if she was nicer back then but clearly permafucked her mentally. She didn’t even move out. She kept living there.
Dying peacefully via MAID is certainly less traumatic to everyone else.
If our gun laws here were like those in the states, I truly would not be here right now.
The same would be of MAID if it was supplied for those with mental illnesses.
It is insane to me that people are just casually blowing this off as if it means nothing. You have no room to regret a permanent decision, and no hope to hold out on.
If my attempts were successful I would have never found myself in this spot where yes, things are still rough, but I can at least say it’s better. I’d have never predicted where things would have gone ten years ago when I was still depressed and feeling suicidal then, by giving people the option to do this, you rob them of the potential for a better life forever.
You’re presenting assisted suicide as if it’s just a “willy nilly” decision. People don’t “just” go to a physician and stick a needle in their arm. It’s a long process that involves careful evaluation.
Going “I didn’t kill myself and I’m happier for it” doesn’t make you the spokesperson of thousands of other people who are still here, suffering, and wishing they weren’t here anymore. You aren’t in their bodies. You aren’t them. They should be able to decide for themselves and if that means suicide, they should be able to do it with dignity, not by jumping in front of a car and messing up multiple lives in the process, or running amok and getting shot by a cop, or jumping from a building and traumatising those around them.
You shouldn’t get to make that choice. They should. That’s the discussion here.
Part of the evaluation is determining whether someone is terminally ill. You are misrepresenting what MAID is by presenting it as a valid choice for someone who has a treatable mental illness.
That is not what I’m presenting at all. Suicide is the the greatest freedom a single person has. That does not mean somebody else has to participate in that act. If somebody requests that help, the process should determine whether the person can be helped before granting that request.
You’re twisting the debate into something it’s not about. This isn’t a “let’s get rid of all the mentally undesirables” act.
Or, and hear me out here, instead of giving the government a cop out to say “your well-being is not our problem, have fun killing yourself”, we have them do their jobs of governing and providing people with basic living standards and human dignity.
If they didn’t suspend this and went ahead with this, what’s preventing them from basically saying “it is what it is, if you can’t function in the society we made inaccessible, here’s your way out, not our job to coddle you”?
Disabled and mentally ill people killing themselves to suit society’s needs will become the norm when it should be the opposite. This is basically systemic eugenics.
I agree with you: we do not do enough for our citizens. We should be doing way more. Where I disagree with you is preventing those who genuinely want to leave this world from doing so with dignity.
This isn’t a “fuck the ill, kill 'em”.
Theyre not yelling at you to go out the door by leaving it open.
Theyre shutting the door on others from being able to choose.
Sound like a typical conservative. Only your choice matters. :/
“Let’s not change the system as it stands, lets just get rid of minorities and people facing minority issues, and the system fixes itself!”
Idk man, that sounds eerily similar to fascism. Just because it’s sugar-coated as being an “option” (which benefits them because they can no longer be held accountable for their poor decisions) doesn’t make it any better.
I highly doubt any of them are telling you to off yourself (unless you’ve pissed them off for putting words in their mouth like this).
I’ve spent decades of my life in a depressive cloud & wish I hadn’t been forced to by other control freaks telling me they enjoy life, so I can to if I just try hard enough - as if I haven’t. They aren’t stuck with my brain, and have no clue what it’s like. I feel like I’m being used as cheap labor because I’m forced to make profit for other people just to keep my life from getting worse. Which is also why I haven’t offed myself as my luck would cause the attempt to fail (as it once did - “fortunately” to no permanent ill effect), and also make my existence more unbearable.
Fuck Off with your obviously conservative control freak bullshit.
Obviously Conservative
Yeah because living in Alberta is immediately equal to being Conservative, can’t live here and be otherwise because everyone knows we’re a hivemind. Can’t be a progressive and think that the mentally ill and disabled have a right to live with dignity, you have to think black and white and think they either deserve to live and wallow in the status quo, or should kill themselves. Weird how I’m being called a Conservative for being against the same thought process Conservatives have.
Control Freak
Don’t fight me on the point of saying people with mental illnesses and disabilities should have the right to live with dignity. Tell a person living with a long term mental illness to “fuck off” because their opinion doesn’t matter in a discussion about the right to live with dignity unless it’s the “right” opinion, which weirdly is the same line of thinking as Conservatives who think the value of your life is either making profit for others, or of no value at all.
Genuinely what is your problem? I give my experience of having to view these conversations second-hand about what people truly think of people with conditions such as mine, and am immediately told to “fuck off”.
Just goes to show a lot of people don’t care nearly as much as they claim to and that people like us are seen as disposable and lesser than, and instead of fighting that point, you decide to propagate it and insult me without due reason.
because living in Alberta is immediately equal to being Conservative
How TF would I have known that? You didn’t mention it in the prior comment. Kinda telling that you went there.
Genuinely what is your problem?
I could ask the same of you. You’re the one deciding for other people what’s right for them - much like conservatives, so that answers the rest of your diatribe.
I’ve got to get back to work, so I’m done here.
People go to people’s profiles to look for dirt on them, I mention being from Alberta on my profile, so I just assumed that you saw my profile, saw that, and jumped to the word “Conservative”.
If that’s not something you did, sorry I got it wrong, but my overall point still stands here.
Also next time you have a suicidal friend, by your own logic, you shouldn’t console them because telling them what they should and shouldn’t do is Conservative logic.
Agreed
Thank you for your comments on this post, it echos many of my own thoughts on the situation.
“as a mom, I’m against child-protection”
You can be mentally ill and still wrong. Just because you’re affected doesn’t mean you’re right.
Cool. So the “right” thing for people like me with mental illnesses to do is to kill ourselves, or have the “right” to decide to do it when we’re of unsound mind.
Do tell me how this isn’t basically eugenics?
Nice strawman.
Being against the death sentence doesn’t mean “let all killers free!”, just like being for assisted suicide regardless of mental illness or not isn’t “kill all the people with shrinks”.
We already have cases of veterans being suggested MAID for minor issues. People with mental illnesses, especially the “bad ones” already have a lot of hoops to jump through to be taken seriously because of systemic issues in the medical system.
You’re essentially letting the people who make those issues prevalent win in allowing this. A lot of these issues are also the result of traumatic situations where they know the worst of people and nothing else.
If I was given MAID as an option ten years ago, I would have taken it because I grew up around severe abuse and betrayal, and only knew people for the worst of what they could be and treated kindness and generosity as something to immediately be suspicious of regardless of the situation. A lot of the times these are disordered behaviours where the second you get a diagnosis for something like borderline personality disorder, people, even many of the physicians supposedly caring for you, assume the worst of you.
What prevents a physician from saying “narcissistic personality disorder? Oppositional defiant disorder? Let me just take the opportunity to suggest this real quick and make things better for all of us”
How?
Edit: so no answers?
Not them, but I think part of it that will be cruel is that the proper supports and services are not in place for some people with mental illness to have an adequate life and so people who would have chosen to ‘escape’ this destiny via MAID will instead be forced to find their own exit or live in that inadequate condition.
I would vastly prefer a system with such support and aide that they would never be a factor in choosing MAID, but we do not have that as far as I can tell.
I am not sure where I stand on this issue because I do not know enough about it yet.
So people have to be mentally ill and in physical pain. What a great outlook for those mentally ill and seeking to end their misery. Now they have to hurt themselves too in order to be taken seriously.
Mental illness is more than just depression.
A scitzophrenic has a mental illness.
What we’re talking about is that if you have a mental illness and you want to be unalive, you should have the option to be assisted in fulfilling that wish. Nowhere does it state “all depressed people must be killed”. Nowhere.
Not good at all.
I find it interesting to see so many downvotes on this thread. Lots of people telling depressed people to suck it up.
Why does everybody think black and white on this?
I’m clinically depressed. You can tell a person with depression they deserve to live with dignity while also telling them the world as it exists is cruel. Why must the options either be telling depressed people to “suck it up”, or essentially telling them to off themselves with no middle ground?
This all feels like having a dirty white shirt, having no washer or dryer to clean it, and when given the opportunity to ask for something, we ask to throw it out instead.
You can tell a person with depression they deserve to live with dignity while also telling them the world as it exists is cruel.
Deserve vs will get is different. This world is rough and you can be well meaning in saying “you deserve better” but to folks deep in pain this sounds not far from “you deserve better sure but suck it up”.
You are still creating excuses for mandating someone’s choice at life with suffering vs not.
Edit: its also like sex work or drugs. You can make it illegal all you want but that just pushes people underground. So. Fucking. Stupid. Sometimes society makes us bash our heads against the wall over and over and expects us to put up with it.
This is neuvoreddit, filled with rddit questionables everything here is black and white.
