“If someone’s life is so awful that they want to die by suicide, why stop them?”
I am frequently asked some variation of this question, even by mental health professionals. Once, a therapist told me about a client of hers with schizophrenia. “He is miserable, and he will always have schizophrenia. I think letting him kill himself is humane.”
I am passionate about suicide prevention. My stance often draws the ire of people who think that people should have the right to end their own life without interference by well-meaning others.
To my mind, there are many reasons to stop someone from suicide. (I am not, by the way, including “death with dignity” or “hastened death.” That’s grist for another discussion.)
Before going into those reasons, I want to make clear that I don’t take intervention lightly. I don’t call the police if someone discloses suicidal thoughts. I don’t think people should be involuntarily committed to a hospital except in the most extreme circumstances, like if someone has a gun in their car and tells me they are going to shoot themselves when they leave my office, without any desire or will to come up with an alternative. I consider myself to be a therapist who doesn’t panic about suicide.
Why Prevent Suicide?
Except in very limited circumstances, such as states where physician-assisted death is legal for people with terminal illness, I believe that therapists should never give up helping a suicidal person to stay alive.
The most important reason to prevent suicide is that suicidal crises, though formidable and painful, almost always are temporary. Even if the person continues thinking about suicide, the intense suicidal intent usually subsides. Consider that 90% of people who survive a suicide attempt do not go on to die by suicide. That number is very revealing. Even among people who wanted to die so strongly that they tried to end their life, most ultimately chose to live.
As long as a person is alive, things can change for the better. Situations change. Even if their external situation is unchangeable, they may discover things that make their life worth living. There is always the possibility that they may find ways to cope. Or they may come to appreciate different things in life. They may even find a purpose in life that gives their loss or trauma meaning.
Kevin Hines is a suicide prevention advocate who, years ago, jumped off of the Golden Gate Bridge, the site in the U.S. with the most suicides every year. Death is almost certain when one jumps from the bridge. More than 1,500 people are known to have jumped to their death, and only 30 or so are known to have survived. So when Kevin jumped from the Golden Gate Bridge, he was absolutely intent on dying. And yet, even with that intention, the moment he jumped off the bridge, he instantly regretted his decision.
His experience is one of many (including my own story) that illustrates that the wish to die is fluid. It comes and goes to varying degrees. A great many people who are saved from suicide are thankful, sooner or later, to be alive.
Is Suicide Rational?
Another important reason to prevent suicide is because, proponents of rational suicide notwithstanding, suicide is often irrational.
Some research indicates that 90% of people who die by suicide had a diagnosable mental illness at the time of their death (though more recently, some evidence indicates that not as many people who die by suicide have a mental illness diagnosis).
Mental illness distorts thinking. What is bad can seem good, and vice versa. Often, very often, when a person’s mental health improves, the wish to die goes away.
Some people contest the high estimates of mental illness in suicide. Even if we presume the 90% figure is correct, not everyone who dies by suicide has a mental illness. Other things besides mental illness can also distort one’s thinking, such as substance use, sleep deprivation, and trauma.
When people address these issues, they often join the legions who seriously considered suicide or made an attempt, and who many years later live to tell about it.
Revised on May 30, 2017, this post was originally titled “‘If Someone’s Life is So Awful that They Want to Die, Why Stop Them?'”
© Copyright 2013 Stacey Freedenthal, PhD, LCSW. All rights Reserved. Written For: Speaking of Suicide. Photos purchased from Fotolia.com
A bullshit article … and not one compelling reason to not commit suicide. Not one. Spare everyone the things can change or you can learn to find new meaning in life…It does not speak to the realities of the very real hell people with disabilities, in poverty or living with trauma face.
[This comment was edited in accordance with the Comments Policy. – SF]
Ben,
I see that the article angered you. The hostility people have toward suicide prevention vexed me in the past. Over time, I’ve come to realize my conceptualization of suicide prevention is different from what many others mean. To me, preventing suicide is doing what we can to make life better for people, in general making it less likely that people would want to die by suicide, and helping people stay alive while (hopefully) their lives improve in ways they might not have thought possible. I’ve worked with so many people who are grateful to be alive, despite having been intensely suicidal, that I find tremendous value in this work. But to critics, suicide prevention seems to mean only showing up on someone’s doorstep with handcuffs and taking them to a hospital against their will to be forced to stay alive. That, to me, is a whole other issue, and it occurs to me as I write this that I ought to examine these differences in a future blog post. And I ought to examine the overlap, too – someone can be bound (professionally, morally, or both) by a duty to protect someone from suicide while also working to improve the person’s life and social conditions. It’s not either/or.
Thanks for sharing here. So you know, I removed all personal attacks from your comment, in keeping with the Comments Policy.
Stacey, with all due respect, if you would not cede back control of a persons life (THEIR life, THEIR body, THEIR suffering) after any amount of time spent in treatment, then I do not think that you can claim that your approach is exclusively about helping people and that you aren’t in effect playing the role of the jailer, forcing people to stay alive by any means necessary. Because I’m sure that you know that there are some people who remain suicidal no matter how long they’ve been in treatment, and if it were up to you, these people would stay and suffer indefinitely and nothing would change for them. Merely having the peace of mind of knowing that there is an exit may provide immeasurable peace of mind for many of your most troubled clients. I am wondering what you think about this case study: https://news.sky.com/story/ive-been-granted-the-right-to-die-in-my-30s-it-may-have-saved-my-life-12055578
I know that personally, just having the knowledge that I was not a prisoner here would be of immense peace of mind. It is much harder for me to improve my circumstances when I’m constantly worried about how I could plot an escape route from here whilst the backs of the guards are turned. A prison can become a home when you have the key.
“Existential Goof,”
I agree with you 100%: The possibility of dying helps many people stay alive. Nietzsche said as much: “Thoughts of suicide are a great consolation; they get many a person through a difficult night.” I also like the title of this article: “Suicide Fantasy as Life-Sustaining Recourse.” Same principle. And I have no doubt that it’s true. A lot of people who are given a lethal prescription for medication under Death with Dignity Laws don’t fill the prescription; a lot of people who fill it don’t ingest the pills. I’ve read qualitative research (sorry, can’t recall the citation right now) where people said they were able to stay alive until their disease killed them precisely BECAUSE they knew they had the option to die whenever they wanted to.
Where I disagree with you is the notion that I, somehow, am powerfully and magically forcing people to stay alive against their will. I’m just one person writing at a computer with, half the time, a cat in my lap. I’m not going door to door, invading people’s homes, reading their minds, and determining if they should be taken away. (Sorry for the sarcasm, but I really don’t understand why so many people think *I* singlehandedly am able to force people to stay alive, especially given that it would mean I’m a failure at it, with 45,000+ suicides in this country each year.)
On the rare occasions I have summoned emergency help for someone who had attempted suicide, or was on the verge of doing so, that person had first sought my help willingly. I had an obligation to their healthy self to do what I could, not only because I had legal obligations as a licensed social worker (though those obligations are quite salient), but also because the person voluntarily came to me for help to stay alive, not to die, and I had made a commitment to help.
I can’t stop anyone from dying by suicide unless they reach out to me in some way and give me the information needed to intervene. On rare occasion, someone’s submitted a comment to this site announcing their suicide and leaving their full name. They didn’t need to give me their full name; most people don’t. But they did, and now I know who they are, and they’re about to end their life, so what am I supposed to do? I notify the authorities in those cases. And isn’t that what they wanted, at some level? Why would they give their name (and city, in most cases where this has happened) to me, a person publicly committed to suicide prevention, if they didn’t want their suicide prevented?
Where I genuinely struggle – a LOT, I would add – is I do think people should be able to talk about the decision to suicide (or not) without fear of hospitalization against their will. And I do think if people could die by suicide with assistance from a physician, even in the absence of terminal illness, the suicide could be much less traumatic not only for them but for their loved ones. There’d be a chance to say goodbye. Nobody would discover the body unexpectedly (or NOT discover the body, which to me is its own kind of hell, to not know where your loved one disappeared to and if they’re alive or not). So, then, why shouldn’t we have suicide clinics where people can get their prescription, have their funeral in advance, and maybe even decide to live knowing they have the freedom to die peacefully at any time?
Here’s why, at least for me at this moment, since my mind constantly churns about this topic: Where do we draw the line? Very often, suicidal thoughts are temporary; two thirds of people who seriously consider suicide don’t consider suicide again in the subsequent decade. Not once. Roughly 90% of people who are stopped from killing themselves don’t end up dying by suicide, even many decades later.
So, why should we facilitate people’s deaths when those suicidal wishes will, in many cases, be temporary? No, they’re not temporary for all, and I struggle about the suffering of those for whom suicidal thoughts persist. But the wish to die is temporary for many, like Shannon Parkin, like Kevin Hines, and like myself.
Let’s not also forget the great harm suicide does to the living – the children who lose a parent, the parents who lose a child, the high school that experiences a cluster, etc. I don’t mean that people who suffer should continue to stay alive and suffer merely to spare others the pain of their death. I do mean that as a society, we should remain committed to trying to help people make it through a suicidal crisis alive the best we can – and to creating conditions that make a suicidal crisis less likely to begin with.
Another thing: How do we send a message to one group of people (say, children) that they should ask for help and not kill themselves, while sending a completely different message to others? It reminds me of that editorial cartoon of a suicide prevention clinic and a suicide clinic being next to each other, and a person in a wheelchair having to decide which one to visit. Talk about mixed messages.
So, ultimately, where I land is that any “solution” is imperfect. Some people will be hurt either way – the people who die prematurely, the people who can’t die prematurely, etc. Since there’s no way to make it work for everyone, I think we should just keep trying to help people stay alive, and if someone doesn’t want that help, they’re actually free to end their life. I know, it’s not ideal, to a suicidal person, to attempt suicide without certainty of death, or with the possibility of pain or permanent disability. But they’re also free to end their life – it’s not illegal – and others are free to try to stop them, if others know.
Really, I do know it’s imperfect. But maybe it’s the least bad option, at least to me, in this moment in time.
Anyway, I’ve clearly been thinking about this a lot and one day will write a post about it. For now, I think I’ve just written a post disguised as this comment. 😉
Thanks for sharing, and for challenging me so respectfully, and for “listening.” I appreciate the exchange of ideas.
Also, beautiful writing: “A prison can become a home when you have the key.” And it’s a very good point, too, among others.
That is exactly.. EXACTLY what it means though. I like your definition but we’re talking reality here reality is when i OD’d 2016… They arrested me they locked me in the psych ward I had to see a social worker who was then in control of my life for 2 years. And they made my life worse by making me mandatory do their rules all the way down to I must make three meals a day or I would be locked up again. So reality isn’t your dream wish on suicide prevention. Reality is the courts and the social workers and the police and the will basically make your life more miserable more harder and worse off…. And that is stupid! Do I want to die hell yes do I have a date in mind hell yes.
social worker told me wait 5 years and she said and then I know you won’t feel the same. Well I’m now off probation I don’t have to worry about anybody controlling my life. Hopefully the next time I be around to be arrested…
Src,
Thanks for writing here. I don’t know if your comment is directed at me or at “Existential Goof.” So I’m not sure how to respond but I do have a question. I’m wondering if you live outside the U.S.? What you’re describing is a process unlike any that I’ve heard of in the U.S. Most people here don’t even get help after a suicide attempt, let alone two years of services they don’t want from a social worker. Some states have “outpatient commitment” for people with mental illness, but that’s typically only for medication, not any kind of psychosocial services. And … probation? Doesn’t happen here. I have heard of a few very anachronistic anti-suicide laws that are still on the books in some cities, but they’re not really enforced anymore.
I’m quite familiar though (thank you, Twitter) with the UK’s liberal “sectioning” laws, so I wonder if you’re writing from there. I’ve read accounts by people on Twitter of being sectioned for six months at a time. Here, someone can be involuntarily committed, but it’s quite uncommon and seldom for that long. For example, this report published in 2019 states, “Today, in virtually every state, lengths of stay for committed patients are (usually) brief, typically a week to 10 days.”
In any case, I’m sorry you’ve gone through so much, and especially sorry you haven’t been helped. To be told to wait five years can be like telling someone with two broken legs to run five miles. I get that. I wish you could have relief without dying.
Also, I normally correct obvious errors in comments, but I’m not correcting your missing word in the last sentence. I’m not a Freudian, but I do think sometimes our unconscious asserts its wishes in spite of our conscious intent, and that very well could be what happened here. That – or you just absent-mindedly left off the word “won’t.” Either way, I don’t want to change the meaning of what you wrote, so I’ll leave it as it is.
I live in the state of Minnesota the Great supposedly friendly Midwest. And that’s exactly what happened they lock you up they take control of your life social work gets involved and the courts decide that they will be in charge of your life for the next x amount of years
Src,
Oh my, I thought for sure that hadn’t happened here. Well, we do have 50 states, all different. But wow, that’s some intense care you’re getting. I wonder, are you receiving services from an ACT? (Assertive Community Treatment). That’s more intensive. (Clearly I’m looking for logic here.)
So many people who want help can’t get it that it frustrates me you’re getting so much care you don’t want. If only you could give it to someone, you know?
Anyway, thanks for answering my question — and teaching me something new and important.
You know I don’t think until you really walk in certain people shoes but you can judge or tell them it’s wrong to leave this world by their own hands. You have no clue what everyone goes through. And if a person is really thought it out can they see that they have nothing or no possibility of a decent future I have no family and they’re all alone and their health isn’t good and they know as we get older health will deteriorate more and more and more then what the hell is the point why keep going. Just to say I’m going to keep fighting to the end? Or so no one says you gave up. Sometimes giving up is the right thing to do. It makes no sense when you’re constantly in pain or hurting and you’re all alone you don’t really have anyone except maybe a great friend who has their own life with their own family but your spouse has passed on your kids don’t talk to you and haven’t for years cuz they have their own lives for whatever reason and you just exist every day and night. It makes no sense to keep going on…. Especially if you believe that there’s a heaven and an afterlife that is way better than down here
You hit the nail right on the head
You’re so right. It’s too bad some people just don’t get it.
At 32 I got hurt at work, nothing was fixed after around 13 surgeries now I have constant pain and theres no help left for me. My pain is eating me alive. So tell me now what besides leaving this world!!! Im tired.
Kevin Hines regretted his unsuccessful attempt, but there is no evidence that anyone has ever regretted a successful one. Just because most attempt survivors don’t end up going by suicide doesn’t mean suicide prevention doesn’t cause more suffering.
Does anyone realize that other people have LESS say when someone gets pregnant but is not fit to be a parent? Or when someone with mental health issues decides to buy a gun? Or when irresponsible texting people get behind a wheel? A person should be able to just kill themselves if they want to die already! So much stigma, red tape, and bureaucracy surrounding SOMEONE ELSE’S life. It’s no one else’s business (life)!!!
Well, I certainly have to agree with your point, but it shouldn’t have to be the case.
I know that there are people who love me. Who Cherish me. But in a futile attempt to get rich and have money, it seems to be going bad. Just got a letter of demand, saying I must pay 16k in 21 days or it will be taken to attorneys, which may cost upwards of double that. It’s not actually my money though, it’s my mom’s. But if she goes down I go down with her. Her money and my money are one in the same. We are trying to get a business going but I am not the entrepreneur type. So now I feel lost. Probably need to get a job and hustle for some bullshit like money. This is why I’m here. Just dipping my toes in and test the waters. And it’s funny I was just in a club for the first time and it was fun. I know a very cool lady who would be very disheartened at me killing myself. Lots of friends would be hurt. And not to mention my mom. She’d end up killing herself shortly after, causing all my friends and her friends to be very hurt. I am that jokey type. That guy who loves showing care and affection, but my life seems to be steadily falling down with someone else’s. Why do humans show no empathy to each other, so little people would care for your death or passing. Might even mock you for being such a pussy for offing myself so early.
Why is life so miserable, why do we make it so hard for ourselves? I don’t like thinking negatively but recently it’s become horrid and unbearable. I think I should find a way out of it. I could try writing what I’m feeling. Maybe make it a book. Maybe offer some courses on getting through depression even though I have no clue what I’d be talking about. Maybe the book idea is good. But then again, there is still that Letter of demand and the rent to pay. And that’s not negotiable it has to get done. But I have like 1k in the bank, and I’m not making enough to possibly pay Vodocom in time. Maybe I should seek help from friends and see what they have to say, but I don’t want to loose any friends this way, they must have their own struggles that their dealing with.
Anyway, I do think Wendy’s statement is kind of false and true. If someone would be better off dead than alive, I think go for it, but those who love you will be heartbroken, and family members will be very much so, if not more. I suppose someone like me should not think this way. But when I see that 16k outstanding Letter of demand, I don’t know… It doesn’t seem right. It’s not like I was getting much done with my business.
I could keep writing but I’d be writing forever.
The writer of this article says in one of her replies to someone in the comment section:
“Where I find my peace (at least, for now) is with the recognition that people can end their lives — nearly 50,000 in this country do every year — but it’s not their right to demand that other people participate in their suicide, either by providing the means for suicide or by not intervening when a death is imminent or in progress.”
I was so floored reading this that I had to get up from my kitchen table and walk around for a half hour to calm myself. What this article and the exchanges in its comment section have taught me are first, that people just won’t stop feeling entitled to tell others what to do with their lives. And they’re willing to use force to get others to conform.
Second, people who are opposed to suicide often say that suicidal people “can commit suicide if they really want.” It’s like they don’t see or care less about the resulting incredible terror and suffering relying on the crude tools most of us can actually get brings. Or what often happens when people fail. Or that laws actively stop us from getting what we need to do what we want without forcing anyone else’s participation.
The most important thing I’ve gotten from reading this article and the comments, though, is that the author is right about one thing. We have no rights. I’m sure slaves felt the same way when they were being cruelly exploited. I’m sure other women like me felt the same way before we could vote or go to universities or do with our bodies what we want. I’m sure gay people felt the same way when professionals in therapy forced them to undergo brutal treatments because the professionals convinced the courts they knew gay people were sick. These groups didn’t then and we don’t now have rights of personal freedom.
So this is the most important thing to change–getting legal rights. The moral arguments are incidental. They’re not going to convince people who already feel what they do. This has to become a federal level legal battle in the US. Martin Luther King Jr: “Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.”
Tht was VERY well spoken and sadly 100% true.
Arianne, I agree. With each of the groups you mentioned, at one point it was LEGALLY justifiable to deprive these people of rights others in our culture enjoy. Today, none of these groups has to seek the approval or the permission of the rest of us to act. But just looking at the turmoil in the US over issues like gender, race, and sexual orientation, it’s obvious people can mistake their personal values and sentiments for facts and abuse this to deprive others of making informed, private decisions about themselves. As you mentioned, in the US, we censor people seeking information we don’t like and even arrest them for trying to acquire the means for peaceful egress involving no one else. But then, the same people advocating for this heavy-handed prohibition will utter juvenile, ironic expressions like, “You don’t have a right to involve others in your choice.” The hypocrisy is mind-numbing.
In the many years I’ve been practicing medicine, no mental health professional, including psychiatrists, has ever provided me a robust justification for the horrors I’ve witnessed in the emergency department or in forced commitment wards or the entitlement they enjoy to remove the civil rights of people who haven’t broken the law. Neither is there hard biomedical evidence supporting their justifying hypotheses nor is there any consistent moral/philosophical argument in support of their entitlement to coerce. I think earlier either you or another commenter pointed out that more nations around the world are finding it legally unjustifiable to prevent ALL people from accessing gentler, more peaceful ways to end their lives if they consistently conclude this is in their best interests. Despite the strong vein of religion still coursing through US culture, I’m confident eventually our legal system, too, will conclude people have an ultimate right to decide about themselves. Surveys of the American public already bear this out. Just as in divorce, the effects on others, though possibly sad, cannot be used morally consistently as a justification for preventing others from acting on themselves. Otherwise, we don’t belong to ourselves but to others.
To start I want to say that while I don’t agree with all of Dr. Freedenthal’s stances and have provided points in opposition I do commend her for at least allowing the discussion. Keep in mind there can be professional ramifications for doing so. Right or wrong they do exist and she is facing them of her own choosing so lets not loose sight of that. Yes you are hearing typical counter arguments and yes there are clear flaws but simply pointing out the flaws does little good, we need to attempt finding workable answers.
As to your initial statement, I believe my response to Dr. Freedenthal’s assertion lays out a clear response to the “can commit suicide if they really want” argument as well as providing the beginning of a framework to address the question of conflicting rights. I know it isn’t a solution but please read it and if you like it use or adapt it as you feel best.
Now, to add a new element to your comparison of rights ponder this. In our society it is well accepted, even in the mental health industry, that a woman can choose to have an abortion for any cause. Now, what is the difference between this abortion and a euthanasia other than the fact that in only one of these two procedure did the individual whose life is ending request and consent to the procedure? Perhaps there will be claims of the child not actually being a life but I think this a flimsy stance especially when you aren’t challenging the rights of the woman to her abortion.
Brava, Arianne! I don’t know if you’ll see this comment, but I came to this site because someone had screenshot your comment here and shared it elsewhere. I was born outside the US. In our mental health system, “professionals” are entitled to force people who say or write things offensive to powerful groups into treatment facilities that in many instances are worse than prisons. I did a residency in urban emergency medicine in the US and often interacted with your country’s “mental health” system. I read all this blog’s comments. There are other physicians who’ve written here about how unjust this system too often is. I don’t want to seem presumptuous or condescending in suggesting, like another commenter, that you should go read something else or consider some other point, as if your own thoughts on and experiences with this important topic weren’t already sufficient. But as I was reading your comment, I thought about Dr. Susan Walker’s University College of London team’s recent publication in The Lancet of a ground breaking study disclosing the significantly higher rates of forced psychiatric hospitalization of children and adolescents. This comes on the heels of other epidemiological research that shows black and other minority individuals in the US are significantly more frequently subjected to forced psychiatric hospitalizations–and suffer gravely disproportionately the social, legal, criminal justice, and economic fallout from such coercion. So your comments that moral arguments about coercion are largely impotent, and that what’s needed is protective legislation are spot on. The irony here is that this site’s owner invokes “rights” that people do not have.
Something else your comment brings to my mind is the growing research divulging coerced psychiatric treatment’s severely negative effects. For example, studies like the Trott & Reeves 2018 publication on social class & therapeutic relationship (Counselling & Psychotherapy Research) show that the therapeutic relationship is very much biased by therapists’ worldviews, their experiences, their opinions, and the socioeconomic power differential between counselors and patients. Still other studies are showing a net harm many vulnerable patients can experience from therapy. Again, scores of studies show poverty to be an independent mediator of “mental illness,” yet instead of battling poverty through program shown to be effective at battling psychological suffering and suicide, like housing initiatives or greater access to protective legal advocacy, the US continues a war on the poor (not poverty). Then, they pathologize or criminalize the poor. Yet still, somehow it’s pertinent to remind people who have exhausted options and find themselves destitute that they have no rights to involve others…
Ultimately, you’re right. Laws must be changed so others DO have rights. Otherwise, those who disagree will keep having the right both to bodily coerce AND control the social dialog. Witness what’s happening in the US now with even empirically evidenced arguments being censored because the powerful disagree. But the history of the US is full of coercion. And justifications of coercion. At every step of the way along the path of getting rights, whether they were Native Americans, blacks, women, people of other sexual orientations, or other out-groups, those who didn’t have rights were reminded that they didn’t have rights. So it’s not surprising that so many are repeating the same mistakes now.
Dear Arianne,
You and many other people here seem to be thinking of ‘suicidal people’ as a minority group like any other – such as ethnic minorities, gay people, transsexual people etc – and saying, ‘Just as gay people should have the right to express themselves by having same-sex relationships, and transgender people should be allowed to live as members of the gender they identify as, so suicidal people must have the right to express themselves by ending their lives.’
But, bearing in mind that feeling suicidally depressed is often a response to experiencing injustice (economic, homophobic, racist etc), advocating making it easier to commit suicide looks to me more like a way of entrenching injustice than of righting a wrong. It looks like saying, ‘If you are part of a group that society treats as unfit to be alive, you should confirm that you agree with society’s opinion by killing yourself.’ You can fight injustices only if you are still alive to go on campaigning against them.
Look at the Black Lives Matter campaign. There wouldn’t be much hope of trying to defeat institutional racism if, instead, all black people in white-majority countries joined a ‘Black Lives Don’t Matter’ campaign and killed themselves before the police or the judiciary had the opportunity to do so.
I don’t want this to sound as though I’m accusing people on this site of being cowardly or lazy. A lot of the time, we don’t have the emotional energy to campaign against anything. But this is why we sometimes just need to rest and heal and regather strength, and see if we can find anyone who can help (whether friends, family, professionals, volunteer services etc) until we get to the point where we can fight back against the source of our problems.
If you’re wondering, I am autistic and epileptic and have struggled to find work for most of my adult life and have suffered from depression since I was a child, so I do have first-hand experience of this. But I would not define myself as ‘a suicidal person’ or ‘a depressed person’ in the same way that I could define myself as ‘an autistic person’. Autism is part of who I am, like my gender, and the world needs to accept it. Depression is something that happens to me when I accept the lie that I am worthless.
Some of us have simply never wanted to live.
Temple Cloud, I first want to recognize your own struggles. I’m sorry you hurt. You are, of course, entitled to decide for yourself what your life experience means and to decide how to deal with it. But the many people here advocating for choice should equally be entitled to decide how much life suffering they want to endure. While it’s obviously true, it bears pointing out that no one makes an informed decision to be born. Public figures like Bill Gates and others point out over and over again that life isn’t fair. Worse, we humans often make life even less fair and more painful for many.
The fact is that almost no one is going to guarantee suffering people what many of them feel are the minimum conditions for them to be content living–things like affordable housing, access to caring and competent medical care, work grounded in personal dignity that pays enough to save for emergencies and eventual retirement, high quality companionship, freedom from ongoing grave physical and emotional pain… To many of us, the questions of what it means societally to advocate for making suicide “easier” is at best academic. Millions live lives full of terrible, black suffering while others have the luxury of considering and arguing. Worse, many of these sufferers don’t have the resources to be able to “rest and heal and regather strength, and see if we can find anyone who can help.” Working in a clinical setting, I can attest that for a shocking number of people, there is no one to offer substantive help.
Another point I’ve read from some here and elsewhere is that many sufferers should coordinate with their communities better. This assumes people have caring family. Or that they’re part of the right socioeconomic (or other) groups that the health care system actually cares about them. I’d think the stark evidence we got during the pandemic of some of the egregious ways the poor and vulnerable are treated–and the way this treatments statistically translates into significantly higher death rates across the age spectrum–would be enough to make it obvious that there are many, many, many people who just don’t have advocates. No one cares for them. The homeless. The isolated elderly. The poor who’re also members of “the wrong” groups. Ideologies (like what’s just or moral) don’t keep these people housed or fed or cared for. While we’re arguing about what would be nice, they’re suffering. And we’re not able to stop it. Why should they have to stay here suffering while we ponder and argue? For generations, I should add.
This site’s author has said (I’m paraphrasing) that she tries hard to help those she can. Brava. Truly. But what about the ones who can’t be helped for many reasons. The “difficult patients” whom health care fires. The chronically mentally ill who don’t respond well to drugs or conventional therapy? Those who, despite what else can be done for them, are utterly dissatisfied with the lives possible for them?
Adults should enjoy the freedom to decide for themselves whether they want to keep playing the game of life or not. Otherwise, we are the property of something or someone else whose moral values trump our own life imperatives. Especially in countries where it costs a lot of money to stay alive AND we’re constantly reminded we HAVE NO RIGHTS to things we need to survive (like housing…), it strikes me as especially cruel that we on the one hand can’t agree culturally to end physical deprivation, but on the other hand we presume to tell the suffering they must stay alive.
Here’s to brighter tomorrows for you.
The thing is i dissagree strongly about this especially the it always gets better my life has been progressively gotten worse and worse to the point where i have nothing to live for anymore i lived a decent life and id rather have the option to take my own life if i choose to id rather die cause i choose to not forced to live a shittier and shittier existence if there was an easy not painful way of taking your life like putting a dog to “Sleep” i’d do it in a heartbeat i wasnt designed to deal with “human life” its full of stress and unrealistic expectation they should just come out with a suicide booth like in futurama so people like me can say hey i lived a good life bye and then do it theres nothing honorable living a shitty life full of stress and constantley having to deal with bullshit fighting for everything i might be considered young at 23 but i dont want my life to be dictatted to me oh you work deal with stupid people then get into a relatiinship then you gotta have kids and endless stress until im old enough to retire then i get to live my life or die of the stress fuck that i wanna live my life while im young and with no stress since i cant cause of how people are expected to live and you need the dumb construct of money to live “happy” im done with all of that and id honestley take my life right now if i could.
I’m sorry to hear how rough your life has been. Life in the pandemic is miserable and our society has a horrible amount of stress built into it. If I knew you, I’d try to find some way to give you support and comfort. I hope you can find support locally or online.
At 23, I believed that my life would never be anything but hating myself and emotional misery. I spent several years where I felt suicidal all the time. I was hospitalized 5 times. Now I’m 58 and I’ve done a shit-ton of therapy (and more recently Al-Anon). My life keeps getting better and better. Every decade of my life has been better than the last.
I live with long-term chronic pain and my parents died a few years ago but loving myself means that I’m happy to be alive. I was able to reassure my mom that when she died, it would be hard but I would be okay. And that was true.
These days my big thing is telling people silly jokes because everybody needs a chance to laugh, especially during this miserable pandemic. Here’s one for you. I hope it gives you a moment of feeling better.
Why does a chicken coop only have 2 doors?
Because, if it had 4 doors, it would be a chicken sedan.
I wish you the best!!
Stacy
I read your post stating that someone submitted a comment that they hope you die. I am sorry to hear that. There is no excuse for such animosity, you have done nothing to merit it. On the contrary, you are running a site that deals with a tough subject with a grace and kindness that I can only aspire to. You are willing to state your views, admit that there is no perfect answer, and allow conflicting viewpoints to be heard with a respectful consideration; that is both rare and refreshing. I have nothing but respect for you, and I implore anyone wishing to engage in discourse to please be considerate in your dealings with others.
Stacey
I confess to being a bit late to the party, and was simply perusing the comment section here, when a subgroup of posts caught my attention. Specifically, back in October, there was a discussion on reparative therapy which compared it to suicide prevention. I am not going to join the full debate, as AB did a brilliant job already, but i would like to add some observations as a gay man to this conversation.
First, you wrote that “I don’t think the comparison you make with gay people and so-called reparative therapy is a valid one”. I take issue with the term ‘reparative therapy’ as I am not broken and therefore do not need to be repaired. I understand it is a commonly used term, but it sets the stage for furtherance of the argument that there is something wrong with ‘the gays’ that needs correcting and it establishes a preemptive higher moral ground.
You also wrote that ” Subjecting gay people to harmful therapy harms only them and doesn’t harm the majority who aren’t gay. When I first read that, I thought how callous that sounds, but then I realized that there is truth in the statement. It sums up exactly why so many heterosexual people favor reparative therapy: if it works, great, if not , no harm done (except to the victim of the therapy, of course).
You following that up in the next post with ” I was (imperfectly, it turns out) trying to make the point that the analogy with protecting people from suicide doesn’t fit” and “To the contrary, *not* protecting people from suicide does harm to communities and loved ones”.
Please understand that this is not an attack on you, I just needed to quote certain relevant statements in order to rationalize my stance on why a juxtaposition between suicide prevention and reparative therapy is, in fact, more closely aligned that is first apparent.
So, lets look at the similarities between the two: both are aimed at an individual, someone that a group feels is wrong in thought and/or action, and both attempt to facilitate a change in the individual in question. They both utilize similar processes, akin to brainwashing techniques, to achieve their goal (i.e. isolation, restrictions, loss of freedoms, loss of privacy and autonomy, until the subject capitulates and agrees to accept the mindset of their captors. One uses conversion therapy camps (mostly aimed at the young), while the other uses involuntary hospitalization – but that just a case of a rose by any other name.
The main reason that I feel that the two are comparable comes down to this;
they share the same goal. By this I mean that, as you mentioned, reparative therapy harms only the victim, and spares the group. In essence, the group, whether it is society in general, or family and friends, or even strangers, is in some way hurt by the perceived difference of the individual, and acts to change the individual. This can manifest in many forms: violence, social and/or peer pressure, or negation (kicking youth out of the home for non-conformance, refusing any contact). The end goal is to change the individual, ultimately sparing the group the horrific pain of having to see, hear, or interact with a gay child or adult. That gay person is in effect left to hold the all that pain so that the others are spared . Now compare that to suicide prevention. Again, someone is asked (or forced) to change, to live holding all the pain so that others may be spared. Ultimately, in both cases, one person is left suffering so that a group of people don’t have to.
Looked at in the right light, it is evident that both reparative therapy and suicide prevention utilize the same methods, with the same goals and outcomes, just focused on a different subset of the population. Contrary to being invalid, rarely has a comparison been so apt.
JS,
Thank you for your thoughtful reply to my comment. I’d like to respond to a few of your points.
Your comment implies that there are only two choices for a suicidal person: be required to suffer in order to spare others from suffering the grief of loss, or be allowed to die by suicide without anybody interfering. I propose that this dichotomy is overly simplistic. There are many more options that do not involve the suicidal person suffering limitlessly if they are alive.
Suicide prevention isn’t only about keeping somebody safe from suicide. It’s also about trying to help the person to feel better, to suffer less, to cope better when suffering is present, to connect with people and resources that can help them, to find meaning and hope, even to feel happy or at least content. In other words, helping a suicidal person to stop wanting to die by suicide requires trying to make the person’s quality of life better.
The same cannot be said about trying to force someone to, somehow, stop being gay. Another difference is that suicidality is a fluid, often temporary state. There are many people who felt abjectly suicidal and even attempted suicide but who later felt differently (myself included).
Further, being gay doesn’t hurt anybody, least of all oneself. There’s nothing wrong with being gay. Being suicidal not only hurts oneself by depriving the person of opportunities for life, growth, etc., but it’s also a symptom that something is wrong in the person’s world, social environment, or even their mind, as in the case of mental illness. That is, somebody who’s suicidal usually has been gravely hurt by conditions such as poverty, trauma, stress, depression, addiction, and the like. Helping that person requires trying to alleviate the problems that trigger suicidal thoughts, which, again, means trying to make the person’s life better.
You state that efforts to convert someone from gay to heterosexual and efforts to help a suicidal person stay alive “both utilize similar processes, akin to brainwashing techniques, to achieve their goal (i.e. isolation, restrictions, loss of freedoms, loss of privacy and autonomy, until the subject capitulates and agrees to accept the mindset of their captors. One uses conversion therapy camps (mostly aimed at the young), while the other uses involuntary hospitalization – but that just a case of a rose by any other name.”
Your statement implies that helping suicidal people is limited to involuntarily hospitalizing them. Most psychotherapy with suicidal individuals does not involve hospitalization. Only in extreme cases is somebody hospitalized.
Those are some of the reasons why I think conversion therapy and suicide prevention are very different. I understand you feel differently. I wanted to make the points above for the sake of others who might come upon this exchange, too, and who might benefit from more information.
Thanks again for sharing your views here, especially in such a respectful, thought-provoking way.
Stacey
I would like to thank you, both for your thought-provoking response and for this website that gives people a chance to communicate their views and, perhaps, to appreciate the viewpoint of others. It is much appreciated.
I would like to to attempt to clarify a few potential misconceptions between my post and your reply; these are strictly my thoughts and not meant to be the voice of anyone but myself.
There are actually only two choices for a suicidal individual (by this I mean someone who is actively suicidal, has a plan, means, and intent, or is physically in the process of suicide): to live or to die. That’s it. Anything else is complicating the matter unnecessarily. To die is an end, full stop; Game over. The other side of the dichotomy, however, is to live; and this is where things get complicated. To live has various outcomes, most of which are variants on a few themes: one may end up living with suffering that continues endlessly, or live with suffering that abates with time (for whatever reason). One might, instead, live with suffering that leads them to attempt suicide again and again, never quite accomplishing their goal; alternately, they might complete a suicide on a next attempt, or a third, or fourth, or more. The point here is the there are a number of possible outcomes related to preventing an actual suicide, and of the four main paths that I can see, only one is acceptable. The others all lead to more suffering in one form or another. All of these outcomes have occurred and will happen, but only the survivors that are ‘glad’ they survived are ever mentioned when discussing suicide prevention.
When you talk about suicide prevention not just being about keeping somebody safe, it is in my mind that you are referring to the movement, for want of a better word, of suicide prevention and not the prevention of the act itself (although that’s a part of it, obviously). I view suicide prevention as the actual actions taken at the time of crisis, the other things mentioned are not actually prevention (again, to me), but instead the methods or tactics used to facilitate the goal. Yes, it is splitting hairs, but if you do those things and someone does not commit suicide, you cannot be sure you prevented a suicide, only that one did not occur. it may not have happened anyway, as many people who feel suicidal do not actually attempt.
You mentioned, as part of the prevention tactics, connecting with people and resources that can help them find meaning and hope. That’s great when it works, when the resources are available and affordable, and when the people are engaged and willing; but many times that is not the case. Frequently there is no one, as family or friends are absent or aloof foe various reasons; as professional help is priced for the well-off and wealthy; and as the availability of mental health care is close to non-existent in many geographical areas.
As for hope (again, this is my viewpoint only) – hope is a false prophet. Hope promises salvation but rarely, if ever, delivers. I read somewhere that hope is disappointment delayed, but it worse that that; it’s also disappointment magnified. The more you hold onto hope, the greater the disappointment when you finally realize that its never going to be fulfilled.
Suicidality is indeed fluid, but then again, according to the latest science, so is sexuality. Not sure of the correlation there to be honest.
I never said being gay hurts anybody, I said that the group is in some way hurt by the perceived difference of the individual – the hurt comes from the groups perceptions. As for being suicidal being a symptom of environment, all i can say is to look at the last several years, as well as current events in this nation. The extremist views espoused, the hatred for anyone different, the violence – I don’t see how you alleviate that. Especially when our politicians are fanning the flames.
Yes, conversion efforts and suicide prevention share many overlapping characteristics ( or processes) to achieve their goal, and no, involuntary hospitalization is not the only method of help; but it is the last method of help, and a harmful one at that. Your statement that “only in extreme cases is somebody hospitalized” is how it should be, but unfortunately, it is not entirely true. I know; as a young man, I had experience with a 3 day stay because I reached out when i was having a hard time with my sexuality vs my religion. I did not state that I was going to kill myself, but was forced into the hospitalization anyway. It caused near irreparable harm in my family dynamics that echo to this day.
As an aside, I have worked in healthcare, and I have seen firsthand many abuses of the 3 day hold (or whatever its called in various states) where the hospitalized did not meet the criteria, but was forced in to the involuntary hospitalization anyway. This happen far more often that it should.
So, I still believe that suicide prevention and conversion therapy (and thank you for respecting my opinion on the name, it does mean a lot that someone hears me on this) are very similar. They both are about one carrying pain for many. It does not matter where the pain originates, or for how long they carry it, just that it exists.
Thank you for listening to my rambling monologue.
“Being suicidal not only hurts oneself by depriving the person of opportunities for life, growth, etc., but it’s also a symptom that something is wrong in the person’s world, social environment, or even their mind, as in the case of mental illness.”
If we change the word “suicidal” to “gay” in your sentence, we get a sentence that has been said and written countless times about gay people in the past. Today such a sentence would be considered homophobic. It is conceivable that at some point in the future, the unchanged sentence may become equally controversial.
Mark,
Linguistically, yes, perhaps the two sentences could be equated with each other. Qualitatively, the meanings are vastly different. It’s a fact that suicide does great harm to children who lose a parent, parents who lose a child, communities who lose a valued member, and so on. That is objectively true; research shows that children who lose a parent to suicide, for example, experience negative effects on their mental health. (And, of course, premature death robs the individual of opportunities for change, for growth, even for joy, but I know that argument may not be compelling to some people.)
There is NO empirical evidence that being gay harms others. Some people with homophobia might say that being gay harms the gay individual. However, the only thing about being gay that harms gay people is the bigotry, abuse, and hatred of others.
To sum up, while there is no evidence whatsoever that loving somebody of the same sex is harmful to oneself or others, the same cannot be said for suicidality or suicide.
I appreciate your sharing your views and adding to the discussion.
Stacey,
With all due respect, your arguments seem flimsy.
It is objectively true that being gay affects a person in ways that most people would agree are negative. To give a few examples: 1) Dating is harder for a gay person, because only 10% of the population is gay or bisexual; 2) Becoming a parent is harder for a gay couple, for obvious reasons; 3) A gay man has a higher chance of contracting or spreading an STD, simply because the chance of contracting an STD via anal sex is higher than in other types of sexual activity (this is based on empirical evidence, which you can easily google for).
So being gay definitely harms a person, irrespective of the way they are treated by their friends and society at large. You may argue that this harm is very small, maybe even negligible, but it is objectively there. I hope that making this statements will not have me labeled as homophobic; I have no interest – good or bad – in other people’s sexual preferences. I merely bring this up since it is relevant to the discussion at hand.
As for the question of whether being gay harms *others*, there are all sorts of arguments for this as well; some of these arguments are preposterous and fallacious, while others merit some consideration (for example, the 3rd point above is valid here too – contracting and spreading an STD obviously does harm not just to the person but to others as well). But rather than mention these arguments, I’d like point out that any condition (positive, negative or neutral) that a person has, regardless of what it is, is always likely to indirectly affect the person’s environment as well. People do not exist in a vacuum. Depression, suicidality, physical health, sexual orientation, gender identity, marital status, religious beliefs, physical appearance and even something as minor as dietary preferences – all of these things affect not only the person, but their environment as well, or at least the people that care about the person.
To sum up, I think that the comparison between homosexuality and depression (and the efforts to treat each of them), while very far from perfect, is in no way outrageous. The strongest evidence for that, I think, is the fact that the American Psychiatric Association considered homosexuality to be a personality disturbance (at least in the DSM) until the 1970s. I think we can safely assume that the APA, by and large, was never motivated by bigotry or hatred of gay people; they merely interpreted the condition of homosexuality in a way that only seemed sensible because they lacked perspective: namely, the harms of homosexuality (such as the ones I mentioned) were overstated and, more importantly, they didn’t consider the question of whether gay people themselves thought there was something wrong with them (and therefore whether they had any interest in being “cured”).
The fact that a large and respected institution like the APA could make such a mistake should caution and humble us. I feel that, as with homosexuality, we are now repeating their mistake on the matter of suicidality. Psychotherapists, social workers, psychiatrists and other medical professionals seem so certain that they are doing the right thing. But are they? In one passage in Dostoevsky’s “Crime and Punishment” he talks about how “never had men considered themselves so intellectual and so completely in possession of the truth, never had they considered their decisions, their scientific conclusions, their moral convictions so infallible.” It seems apt here.
I completely agree with you, Mark: “as with homosexuality, we are now repeating their mistake on the matter of suicidality.” Unfortunately, until the legal system rights this wrong, people will be able to inflict harm on others because they can (have the right) and because they perceive the harm they’re imposing to be good. Our moral reasoning evolves at a glacial pace. Same issue (personal freedom regarding one’s OWN life and body), same objections (But, I know what’s right for you, as evidenced by my OWN experience with this phenomenon and others agreeing with me!).
Stacey
You said “Your comment implies that there are only two choices for a suicidal person” but I think you missed the point. He was not talking about the suicidal persons choices but the choice of society on how they view said person. More specifically, how society chooses to take the individual’s choice away from them.
You said suicide prevention is “about trying to help the person to feel better, to suffer less, to cope better when suffering is present, to connect with people and resources that can help them, to find meaning and hope, even to feel happy or at least content” but what if they have no interest in this. I mean, lets just assume you have ran into a person that is 100% actually done with the bs of life and just wants it to be over. For the sake of discussion lets say you have some gizmo that can confirm this with scientific accuracy. They are fully aware of the potential for better things to come, have thought it over well, have no underlying conditions to be committed for and just prefer to be done. Now, can someone ethically work to improve the life of a person in this situation?
Sure the same can be said. Per some theology some group believes being not gay is an improvement to the persons life. They have just as much evidence to back this up as there is to back up being alive is an improvement over being dead. Heck, according to some trying to convert the gays death is much better than life although I guess that would be considered hear-say.
You said “suicidality is a fluid, often temporary state” but what about when it isn’t? I mean I hear “often temporary state” regularly in these context but often temporary means sometimes permanent. I am by no means saying society should treat act like it is always permanent. I know it isn’t since I have been there for others who were fighting it, seen them recover and look back on it feeling differently. All I am saying is shouldn’t society at least consider what to do when it isn’t temporary because it seems we all know sometime it isn’t.
Some would argue that another being gay causes them emotional distress based on violating morality. That it is a sin and thus a form of self harm. I don’t agree with them but I am aware of them. I believe they make the exact same case against suicide and even formed the basis of our societies views on the subject back when the pushed for laws against both acts. You said “There’s nothing wrong with being gay” but there is nothing wrong with dying either. You said “Being suicidal not only hurts oneself by depriving the person of opportunities for life, growth, etc.” but it also can be the only way of ending suffering. You call it “a symptom that something is wrong in the person’s world, social environment, or even their mind, as in the case of mental illness” but sometimes it is the only actual cure. Yes the suicidal have usually been gravely hurt, sometimes that hurt is small enough to mend, other times they are strong enough to keep it hidden and suffer through but sometimes…. they can’t. Where is our morality as a society if we will put down an animal that cannot recover from a grave injury but will force that suffering upon another human? You say “trying to make the person’s life better” but what about when shorter is better? I don’t expect you to answer these questions, I know the APA/AMA disapprove of such considerations which I get based on their financial interests. If you feel attacked here I apologize, this is a topic that hits close to home for me.
You said “Only in extreme cases is somebody hospitalized” which I agree is true but mandatory treatment is more common and I have seen the system threaten hospitalization to gain compliance. Now, while mandatory treatment doesn’t have all of the brainwashy components JS mentioned from reparation therapy I believe it may better match being counseled by the pastor/priest/whatever in an attempt to convert you without having to send you to the camp. I think the camp was, like the hospital, also used as a threat to drive compliance with attending those sessions. Although my source for that information is the movie “Saved” and a small amount of church exposure, perhaps JS can comment.
Thank you for listening,
Chad,
Once again, thanks for sharing your insights. I may not agree, but I don’t feel attacked at all, and I appreciate your concern that I might. To the contrary, I find your discourse to be respectful, and I like having my thoughts challenged. It’s one way we learn and grow.
Some people do respond to my posts and comments very disrespectfully. This week, somebody submitted a comment saying they hope I die. In keeping with my policy of not publishing personal attacks (against anybody, not just myself), I usually don’t publish such comments. I mention that here only because without seeing that extreme of vitriol, you don’t have the context to see that your comments are not attacking! So thank you. 🙂
And you’ve given me much to think about. Your comments here go beyond whether conversion therapy and suicide prevention are comparable, extending to whether suicide prevention is morally acceptable. I do struggle with the extremes to which suicide prevention will go. I talk about this struggle in a post In Defense of Suicide Prevention, which I published a few years (and hundreds of comments) after the one here.
Where I find my peace (at least, for now) is with the recognition that people can end their lives — nearly 50,000 in this country do every year — but it’s not their right to demand that other people participate in their suicide, either by providing the means for suicide or by not intervening when a death is imminent or in progress. Just as you don’t want someone to be forced to live, nobody should be forced to sit passively when they have the ability to prevent a suicide, in my opinion. To make my premise less abstract, I’ll give an example: The mother of, say, a 25-year-old adult shouldn’t be expected or required to say, “It’s your choice” and do nothing. It’s quite natural that she’d call for help and do everything in her power to save her child’s life.
My stance is not ideal, I realize. It requires a suicidal person to die in fear and isolation if they don’t want to risk intervention. But when it comes to suicide and whether it should be prevented, there is absolutely no way to please everybody. At least on this one point, that there can be no universally accepted “solution,” I think you and I probably both agree.
Thanks again for sharing, Chad!
Stacey,
I appreciate your reassurance. As I stated, the topic just hits close to home for me. By the end of the paragraph I realized my questions had drifted from my normal neutral counterpoints and became more pointed. That is below the standard of behavior I hold myself to, thus my apology. Also, I take the approach that agreement should be the last thing one looks for when trying to answer difficult questions. Since I am not silly enough to believe I have the best possible answer,… to anything, your disagreement is enlightening and appreciated.
I am sorry that some, if not many, if not most, hold themselves to no standard of civility at all. I admit that I do at least conduct myself on here better than the person in your example.
I feel I am reaffirming the original comparison between conversion therapy and suicide prevention but adding a post script to the discussion. Although I admittedly did this across my response to you and the one to JS. In short I assert that the comparison between the two is accurate if the suicidal person is otherwise cognitively competent legally. I then question the morality both on the point I made in my response to you and that if conversion therapy is accepted as immoral then why isn’t the equivalent instance for a suicidal individual so as well.
Not to take away your source of peace but I am going to share my concerns with it. Yes, people can and do end their lives, often in some of the most traumatic situations one can imagine not just for themselves or their family but for everyone directly involved in the aftermath as well as anyone that hears the story later. To make it worse this trauma, that society is mandating by not providing a less traumatic alternative, is then used in the argument against providing said alternative. As for the issue of rights, neither side has the right to impose their will on the other. What makes the rights of one side of this divide more valuable than the other? I feel nothing does, thus both sides should make some allowance for the other. Out of mutual respect if nothing else. With your example, of course that mother shouldn’t have to just say “it’s your choice” and pretend like they don’t care. In fact they should care, they should talk, express why they don’t want the child to die, what they will miss, offer to help, just listen, offer to check out therapy options with them, etc. The only thing I think they shouldn’t do is use society to impose on the child’s rights and walk away like the problem is fixed so they don’t have to care anymore. I know that in your example that is not the impression this hypothetical mother would want to make, I am just saying it is the one they would likely make from the viewpoint of the child.
I appreciate that you recognize your stance isn’t ideal, none on a topic such as this could be in my opinion. We are in lesser of many evils territory so ideal sits in the imaginary plane (to use a math reference). I just wish more people would have the discussion so that perhaps we as a society could develop a way to respect everybody and come up with a generally accepted solution. If only people cared enough to try despite the task being hard and uncomfortable, maybe one day.
Hello Stacey,
This is in response to your comment from April 17, 2021 at 10:15 am.
Maybe I misunderstand, but the line of reasoning in your comment seems inconsistent with your position of generally rejecting the idea of legalization of medically-assisted suicide for non-terminally ill patients.
According to your arguments it seems that you would be fine with medically-assisted suicide if the person’s family (and whatever medical staff is involved) approve and support the person’s wish to die. You give as example a 25-year-old adult who’s mother tries to do everything in her power to save their life, but you do not consider the possibility of the mother supporting her child’s decision and wishing to help them in whatever way she can.
JS
I wanted to attempt to add to it from my perspective as a individual without a approved terminal illness within the USA that has interest in euthanasia.
I feel your issue with “reparative therapy” can be directly laid over suicide prevention in any instance where the suicidal individual does not feel they are broken and therefore does not want to be repaired. While in some locations there is an allowance made for those with an approved terminal illnesses, for anyone else suicide prevention is effectively mandated. As with your example, this mandate logically requires the presumption that there is something wrong with ‘the suicidal’ that needs correcting thus establishing the same preemptive higher moral ground despite. I would expand this to pose that the basis of this presumption in both cases is equivalent. i.e. “Some gay people went on to live ‘normal lives’ after therapy thus all gay people simply need to fixed in a similar manor.” = “Some suicidal people went on to live ‘normal lives’ after therapy (or failed attempt) thus all suicidal people simply need to be fixed in a similar manor.” I could expand on this but I think this is sufficient for now.
Your statement on harmful therapy is also equatable. To explain, lets presume to be discussing an suicidal individual such as above and add to the description that they have no other psychological condition other than the desire to end, call this person “the patient” and substitute in for the references to gays. Now I would pose that the therapy is harmful if by no other measure than it is being forced upon an unwilling patient and making someone do something against their will causes emotional distress a.k.a. harm. Sure, some may be claimed as “repaired” just like with reparative therapy and I see no way to prove the claim any more valid in either case. Some may say that isn’t enough harm to count but then there is the question of forcing the patient to continue living using the therapy as the means of force. This currently can go on for decades until, the patient conforms to the psychological pressure, they finally and mercifully die of another cause or they run out of money. The financial cost being yet another form of harm since they are being made to suffer financially for a service they don’t want. Thus I would paraphrase as: “Subjecting the patients to ‘suicide prevention’ harms only them and doesn’t harm the majority who aren’t the patient.” This is again a callous statement that sums up exactly why so many favor mandated suicide prevention: if it works, great, if not , no harm done (except to the victim of the therapy, of course).
Your correlation between reparative and suicide therapy was very well put but I would alter one sentence from my point of view. “One uses conversion therapy camps (mostly aimed at the young), while the other uses involuntary ‘intervention’ – but that’’s’ just a case of a rose by any other name.” The hospital is claimed as an “extreme” case despite it being the threat used to enforce compliance upon the unwilling which is why it was used as a counterpoint.
Again, you state your reasons well but I want to point out a detail I am unsure if you missed. The act of being gay does no physical harm to the group, whether it is society in general, or family and friends, or even strangers. The group just seeks to be spared emotional discomfort with the actions of the gay. This is the justification they use for trying to force a change. Likewise, the act of suicide does no physical harm to the group, whether it is society in general, or family and friends, or even strangers. The group just seeks to be spared emotional discomfort with the act of suicide. This is the justification they use for trying to force a change. Now some may say the suicide physically harms the group by reduced population or that being gay does so by reducing the rate of procreation but the population is so large these effects are within normal variation.
Chad
I read with interest your corollary between my statements on reparative therapy and your thoughts on suicide prevention, and I must acknowledge the validity of your conclusions. There does seem to be a very large cognitive overlap regarding the reasons for suicide prevention and reparative therapy. I particularly enjoyed your equivalencies; i.e. “some suicidal/gay people went on to live ‘normal’ lives after therapy thus all suicidal/gay people need to be fixed in a similar manner”. I do wonder if it might be too broad a statement, however; for example, consider replacing suicidal/gay people with child abuse victims/cult members and the statement still holds up under scrutiny. Definitely some food for thought there, I may to have to reconsider my views somewhat.
Your missive on therapy brings up a great point, namely, that financial costs can be (and in some cases most definitely is) harm. Being mandated to therapy and forced to use drugs is prohibitively expensive for some, particularly if the individual in question has a illness that prevents them from being financially stable or secure. What good is saving a life if that life is then going to be a life of poverty, or at the least of labor as they owe so much that they will never get ahead?
Intervention can certainly be substituted for hospitalization; I was working from my perspective when I wrote that. Where I live it seems that the courts become involved once a person is hospitalized, I have not experienced or heard of anyone being forced into involuntary treatment otherwise. It may indeed happen, I simply have no knowledge of it. I agree that the hospital/conversion camp is the stick used to force people into treatment, so where is the carrot? It seems to me that something is very wrong if it is all stick and no carrot..
When I said harm, I was using it as a blanket statement meant to cover harm of all kinds: physical, mental, sociological, etc. The group, as you point out, suffers emotional discomfort, or harm. They seek to mitigate this harm by forcing a solution upon the individual, with no thought of the harm they are causing (the irony is almost palpable). This applies equally to the gay person and to the suicidal individual; as you say, the justification is the same.
The reasoning that suicide harms the group by reducing the population is specious at best. I can accept that it may harm the subgroup of family, but not the population as a whole. The planet is overpopulated as it is, I would note that the coronavirus killed more that 500,000 in the United States alone, yet there has been no outcry over a harmed population, because it is such a small percentage of the overall population. I accept that view even less for being gay; the reduced rate of procreation is negligible and predicated on the assumption that everyone is going the have a child. Even then, some gay couples do, in fact, have children.
Anonymous (JS I assume),
Thank you for taking the time to read and think about this. Yes, it is a broad statement and you could substitute in any kind of abuse victim, cult member and likely several other disturbing options into that framework and end up with an argument that the group exerting the power in those instances would likely use as justification if required to do so. For example, in some places terrorists kidnap women then force them into marriages as a means to increase their future fighting force. These women may have several children with their husband (rapist) and function as a housewife (slave) for many years. To these terrorist that woman is now living a ‘normal’ life after they provided ‘treatment’ (beatings) so in their mind she is better and they should repeat the process with other women. It is a logical fallacy, can’t remember the type but the structure is basically ‘I was told ’X’ is good so I did ‘X’ then told myself ‘X’ was good’ which makes a loop with no validation.
Some will still say that such a life is better in their view than the person’s death. I would approach it from the standpoint of why is the treatment and thus the financial burden only required so long as the patient’s has the money to pay for it? You talk about a life of poverty or of labor attempting to cover the bills but that implies they are in fact paying thus making someone money. Once there is no money to be made it is amazing how quickly the medical industry will put that person out. This leads me to question are they mandating the patients treatment or the industries income?
You should read my response to Stacey as well. I actually had a part in there that was more developed then my comments here. Effectively I was posing the question of ‘mandatory treatment’ = ‘required to talk with religious figure’ and ‘hospitalization’ = ‘conversion camp’ to better align the steps and outline the ’stick’ in each instance. As for the carrot, it is ‘X’ in that logical fallacy I talked about earlier. It is more of an imaginary carrot since it isn’t actually valued buy the subject of the motivation but rather the one setting up the motivation system. Think of it like a gamer trying to motivate a farm animal by either hitting them with the stick or offering them time on the xbox.
In my opinion the group is exhibiting something known as inattentional blindness (selective attention). If you haven’t heard of it check out https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vJG698U2Mvo before reading on. Basically, the harm being caused to the subject of their action is the gorilla and the players in white passing the ball is the harm they think they are avoiding. To expand further, the harm they are trying to avoid is the players in black passing the ball since without this added stimulus the gorilla might stand out. Not trying to excuse, just to understand as well as I can.
Again, the arguments I made for the opposition were an attempt to understand the other side. I do feel both arguments are flimsy at best and intentionally deceptive at worst. Although I do not know if they are trying to deceive themselves or the subjects of their actions. I am not entirely convinced the world is overpopulated, unless you mean from an industrial resource and impact perspective. I disagree that gay couples have children in the sense I was meaning. I was talking sexual reproduction as a closed system and do not think it is currently an option for a man to carry a child he had with another man to term or for a woman to fertilize another woman’s egg though maybe I am wrong. I am thinking you meant have children in a open system allowing for a surrogate or adoption which I know is done but didn’t support my premise for the group perceiving itself harmed.
JS
My apology for not using the term “conversion therapy”. I saw you say you took issue with the other term but it was used in the next paragraph and I just didn’t follow the switch at the end.
Chad
No need to apologize, my issue with reparative therapy stems from the fact that, to me, it sounds too positive, suggesting a fix for something broken, and it sanitizes the whole process, making it far more acceptable. I feel that conversion therapy is a far more apt term, as it much more accurately conveys the intent of the ‘therapy’. I am not offended, per se, by the use of reparative therapy, I just find it to be grossly inaccurate as a descriptor.
I was more apologizing for my oversight when reading your original comment than from fear of offending you by word choice. Personally, given your description, I think you could forgo “conversion therapy” as well and just go with “brain washing” given that is a colloquially known term and meets your original comparison.
So basically, sever all connections before I take my life. If I mess up and continue to live, lie through my teeth and tell people I’m glad I was successful, while being miserable for the rest of my life because I’m too much of a coward to try again. Exhausted reading about therapists come up with ways to make dying look bad. There really isn’t a good reason to force people to live. Just let us go. There are ones who didn’t really want to die in the first place. Some of us do. But whatever helps therapists sleep at night and avoid legal issues.