SmokeAndMirrors
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It is only out of selfishness that we refuse to allow people to die how they wish. I will have my cat killed when she becomes too sick to have a good quality of life. She is getting old, and she has medical problems. Medication helps her for now, but less and less as time goes on. I have already decided what my course of action will be when she is too sick to enjoy her life. I've decided I will arrange a home vet visit, and allow her to have privacy if she wants it, as cats frequently do when they are preparing to die. It will be hard for me - I'd rather hold her - but it's not my life.
And I bet absolutely no one here thinks that is crazy or unusual. Most of you would do the same.
So what's the roadblock when it comes to people? Why, pbrauer, is anyone "obligated" to be miserable for your benefit and comfort?
People wish to commit suicide for all kinds of reasons. Often times, the decision is made quite rationally. This is what I mean about this skewed picture people have of suicide. Most of the time, people don't just wake up one day and want to die. And if they do, this is what the basic psych eval is for.
People in immediate psychiatric crisis, with little or no history of it from the past, can often be helped quickly and lead a good quality of life. This should be pursued, and then the request for euthanasia re-evaluated. You will find that most of these people no longer wish to die - they often had a catalyst causing their feelings, like trauma, onset of disease either mental or physical, or even just a reaction to a drug (legal or not).
But for someone with a long, repeated history of non-functional mental illness that does not respond to treatment, euthanasia should be granted. We look at mental illness as being a "lesser" disease to other disease. As though, because the body is healthy, the state of the brain is irrelevant. Sometimes, mental illness is fatal. Yes, suicide is a fatal outcome of mental illness. Other times, it creates a life of endless and untreatable suffering - just like many other neurological diseases.
But it hardly matters what the reason is. If you want to die Maude-style, fine by me. For those of you who haven't seen the cult classic Harold and Maude (SPOILER ALERT), Maude is a relatively healthy 79-year-old woman who decides to commit suicide on her 80th birthday. Why? By her own account, because she's had 80 good years, and that's enough for her. It's all downhill from here anyway.
That does not strike me as irrational. She is just less afraid of death than most.
Here's the thing about it: people assume that mentally healthy people are rational. We aren't.
Mildly depressed people have a more realistic and accurate predictive ability. Mentally healthy people tend to have a "positive delusion" that skews their estimates - thus why people gamble. Our fear of death and our myths surrounding it are fear-based, and completely irrational. Intellectually, death is just another life cycle. And it's probably a lot less painful than some of the things I've lived through. I have no reason to be afraid of death... and yet I am anyway. There's a reason for this irrationality - it helps us survive. It helps us want to keep living. But we're intellectual enough to know when it's time to give up the fight for whatever the reason may be.
Your healthy mindset about death is irrational. It's also selfish for you to think first about how it will affect you when considering someone else's quality of life. It's condescending for you to think anyone who is ready to die must be insane - or that even if they are, their feelings are somehow less valid and their own experience of life irrelevant. It's cruel for you to opt to force them to live in misery and pain instead of allowing them to have some agency.
And I bet absolutely no one here thinks that is crazy or unusual. Most of you would do the same.
So what's the roadblock when it comes to people? Why, pbrauer, is anyone "obligated" to be miserable for your benefit and comfort?
People wish to commit suicide for all kinds of reasons. Often times, the decision is made quite rationally. This is what I mean about this skewed picture people have of suicide. Most of the time, people don't just wake up one day and want to die. And if they do, this is what the basic psych eval is for.
People in immediate psychiatric crisis, with little or no history of it from the past, can often be helped quickly and lead a good quality of life. This should be pursued, and then the request for euthanasia re-evaluated. You will find that most of these people no longer wish to die - they often had a catalyst causing their feelings, like trauma, onset of disease either mental or physical, or even just a reaction to a drug (legal or not).
But for someone with a long, repeated history of non-functional mental illness that does not respond to treatment, euthanasia should be granted. We look at mental illness as being a "lesser" disease to other disease. As though, because the body is healthy, the state of the brain is irrelevant. Sometimes, mental illness is fatal. Yes, suicide is a fatal outcome of mental illness. Other times, it creates a life of endless and untreatable suffering - just like many other neurological diseases.
But it hardly matters what the reason is. If you want to die Maude-style, fine by me. For those of you who haven't seen the cult classic Harold and Maude (SPOILER ALERT), Maude is a relatively healthy 79-year-old woman who decides to commit suicide on her 80th birthday. Why? By her own account, because she's had 80 good years, and that's enough for her. It's all downhill from here anyway.
That does not strike me as irrational. She is just less afraid of death than most.
Here's the thing about it: people assume that mentally healthy people are rational. We aren't.
Mildly depressed people have a more realistic and accurate predictive ability. Mentally healthy people tend to have a "positive delusion" that skews their estimates - thus why people gamble. Our fear of death and our myths surrounding it are fear-based, and completely irrational. Intellectually, death is just another life cycle. And it's probably a lot less painful than some of the things I've lived through. I have no reason to be afraid of death... and yet I am anyway. There's a reason for this irrationality - it helps us survive. It helps us want to keep living. But we're intellectual enough to know when it's time to give up the fight for whatever the reason may be.
Your healthy mindset about death is irrational. It's also selfish for you to think first about how it will affect you when considering someone else's quality of life. It's condescending for you to think anyone who is ready to die must be insane - or that even if they are, their feelings are somehow less valid and their own experience of life irrelevant. It's cruel for you to opt to force them to live in misery and pain instead of allowing them to have some agency.
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