I've spent a lot of time suicidal. I'm happy to see this discussion recognizing that people are suicidal because they are suffering.
But suicide is often a rash decision because you are currently miserable and if you knew that you wouldn't be miserable tomorrow morning, you probably wouldn't do it. In contrast, euthansia is a more logically sound decision that "This is not going to get better and I'm not interested in enduring where it goes from here."
I know there's a difference because I've been through experiences where I was physically miserable but clear-headed and rational and realized this was a short-term thing that would soon resolve, but was physically miserable enough that if I had not been absolutely certain it would resolve within a matter of hours, I would have been suicidal. I have also been mentally screwed up at times and lacked that kind of clear thinking.
It's hard to effectively articulate the difference, but when I'm not rational, I can tell my adult sons and let them know it's not safe to leave me alone today. (It's been a while since I've had such an incident. Being back in housing has been good for both my general level of suffering and my mental stability.)
I think that, you were clear headed - and that was the difference. My personal experience/anecdote with suicide (not me, but I was involved in the recovery), the person were not able to think clearly, even if their problems were fixable and _they knew_ that the problems were _fixable_ but required too much effort, just wanted it to end.
I have attempted suicide once and been hospitalized on a suicide watch twice. My adult sons, now in their thirties, are abundantly familiar with the medical and other issues that fuel my suicidal tendencies and were raised with excellent rubrics for how to handle it.
Some things I've said before that bear repeating:
If you know someone who is suicidal, help them deal with their actual problems instead of dismissing their suicidal tendencies as "they just have a mental health issue." Suicidal ideation is often rooted in serious, intractable personal problems. Acting like they are merely crazy actively pushes people over the edge. (It's basically a form of gaslighting.)
There are generally two elements to any mental health issue, like suicidal ideation or depression. One is physical and the other is social or situational.
When you have reason to believe someone is under physical duress, you may be able to mitigate their current crisis by feeding them, making sure they are adequately warm or cool, making sure they are hydrated and helping them get some sleep. If you tend to their physical needs, they may wake up tomorrow feeling more stable.
If someone is clearly irrational, do not argue with them about whatever they are saying. Do not engage with their crazy talk. It only puts out the fire with gasoline. There is no good reply to something like that because agreeing helps push them over the edge and disagreeing will typically not convince them of anything but will help make them feel disrespected, unheard and like no one cares.
Instead, try to help them find distraction or otherwise engage in care-taking. Resist the temptation to focus on the lurid detail that they are suicidal and talking about negative things.
Don't try to shut them down. If they want to talk, let them talk, just don't reply to it in a way that adds fuel to the fire. It shouldn't be forbidden for them to talk about feeling suicidal.
If you have no idea how to reply, it's okay to say that. It's generally vastly better to say something like "I feel out of my depth here and I don't know what a good response is." than to ignore it or pretend you do know what you are doing.
Agreed. I have a background of depression too, so I was able to sympathize with the person but not on that level. Most of my help was just being there for them and taking care of them, and the idea of somebody is there for them was clearly helping.
We got medical help for the recovery, not in the drugs way, but a professional with the experience of dealing with the kind of problems the person had.
Our job was to keep them going with their lives. That was it. Feeling of being cared and loved allowed them to get professional help that they would not seek otherwise.
If there is no effective legal or socially-accepted means to express one's interest in euthanasia, receive help and consultation about that interest, and demonstrate one's level-headedness, then is there any reliable way to know whether a particular suicide was a rash decision?
Even when it is legal, there is no reliable way to know for certain if it's really the right choice. This is one of the reasons people object to right to die laws.
When Dr. Kevorkian was helping people die in the US, I read an article that indicated that most of his patients were basically middle-aged women who lacked adequate social support rather than people whose conditions were genuinely so terrible that death made sense. If they had been middle-aged men, the odds were good that a wife or female relative would have been taking care of them. Instead, they felt they were an unwanted burden to their family.
But here is a story about a woman with a genetic disorder who starved herself to death and wanted her story told to advocate for right to die laws in Canada:
I think there should be legal medical euthanasia/suicide, treated as the same thing (same cause of death) whether it is done with the patient's active participation or done to comply with their previously legally established wish to be killed under certain circumstances.
Suicide done outside this process should be treated differently.
Wouldn't "result of a medical discussion" (as in expert opinion of no way to improve life quality of a terminal patient) vs "personal decision" (made independently by person for variety of other reasons) fit better?
