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0 pointsmeric10y ago0 comments

Central banks are discussing outlawing cash, so that when the time comes and they want to impose negative rates, they won't be limited by a lower bound - they can be as financially repressive as they like.

Outlawing suicide is the same - if the state is overly oppressive, people would rather suicide than to live under the oppression, and when they suicide they are no longer productive. Removing the possibility of suicide removes the lower bound of how oppressive the state can be.

See force feeding in Guantanamo bay for example. By stopping deaths from hunger strikes, the state can treat it's prisoners as badly as it wants.

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daodedickinson10y ago· 3 in thread

Consider that suicide removes the limit on how awful a society can be by allowing it to kill off anyone who doesn't fit in instead of helping to find a way to improve their situation. Our communities should focus on healing mental suffering so that the despairing are allowed to see that the lens of depression is not the only way to see their situation.

In one Netherlands case in 2014, a 35 year old woman was killed by a Dutch doctor for her depression symptoms. The first two doctors she approached referred her to treatment options, but she kept shopping around until she found a doctor who evaluated her for only two weeks, then killed her two days later. As someone who had terrible depression for years, and has been depression free for years, I know how cruelly murderous this is. It is no better than when cries for help on the internet are met with bullying and end in suicide. Actually, it is worse because the doctors are administering the coup de grace. cite for this woman's story: http://alexschadenberg.blogspot.com/2014/01/the-netherlands-...

Another example of a medical system not supplying a human person with the community and loving support he needed: "In one highly publicized example last year, the clinic helped a 63-year-old man with severe psychiatric problems to end his life. After a very active career working for government, the patient in question could not face his upcoming retirement. In an interview with the Dutch newspaper NRC Handelsblad the clinic’s psychiatrist, Gerty Casteelen said the man 'managed to convince me that it was impossible for him to go on. He was all alone in the world. He’d never had a partner. He did have family but he was not in touch with them. It was almost like he’d never developed as a person. He felt like he didn’t have the right to live. His self-hatred was all consuming.'" http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/02/03/the-dutch-d...

mericOP10y ago

Should we really be relying on the medical system for loving support? That's the direction where depressed people will be drugged up and plugged into the matrix.

If a person has to rely on the medical system for affection, I'd say there's a bigger problem in society.

Suicide is the symptom and focusing on artificially preventing without looking at the way government, debt, taking away religion and throwing the good parts out along with the bad, expectations of conformity intrudes in our lives, it is burying our heads in the sand.

Just look at the way society values lonely fifty year old man compared to a twenty year old attractive women - the latter can go on tinder and receive a firehose of affection, while the former would merely be seen as a creep.

DanBC10y ago

I agree with you, but:

When a person with a mental illness turns to the medical system for support they should be offered a range of psycho-social interventions as well as purely medical stuff.

We know how debt or problem drinking or vulnerable housing or lack of a job or social isolation or etc etc can make mental health problems much worse.

In that situation it's pointless just giving people the medication because they've still got the other stuff going on.

Modern English treatment for mental health problems should be including this range of support. It's not all provided by the NHS. A lot of it is provided by social interest companies (charities) (although it's often paid for by the NHS).

> If a person has to rely on the medical system for affection, I'd say there's a bigger problem in society.

Yes!

Social isolation is a pretty widespread problem. Here the person has become isolated, and needs a bit of help and support to become unisolated. And they need that before they can make use of the other stuff that society provides. Joining a 5-a-side soccer team would help reduce a person's social isolation, but they may need help and support to access that 5 a side soccer. This might only be a bit of sign-posting, or it might be a bit more intensive like shaddowing or buddying.

GunboatDiplomat10y ago

I don't think it's the place of doctors to decide what level of suffering is needed before someone's allowed to kill themselves. That call should be up to the individual in question. If the depressed 35 year old wants to die, she should by all means die.

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