Euthanasia for the Mentally Ill International
OVERVIEW
There has always been a stubborn attitude of taboo and aversion in the mental health community in the United States (and in that of many other parts of the world) towards the idea of a person with refractory mental illness being allowed to choose death as a means to put an end to the intolerable, disabling, and life-damaging suffering that they experience because of their struggle to cope with their mental illnesses. The United States, for example, does not grant doctors the legal right to aid even their most persistently troubled patients in their wishes to achieve death to be set free from their excruciating battles, and most clinicians in the country are in full support of these legal restrictions without question. Likewise, a large percentage of mental health consumers and non-consumers alike are just as supportive of those restrictions as they are unsympathetic (and often hostile) towards anyone who calls for these restrictions to be lifted. They often gaslight any mentally ill individual who expresses wishes to undergo Dr. Assisted Suicide, and they chastise anyone who supports those wishes. They typically do these things by referencing pro-life, anti-death doctrine that they derive from the mental health system’s teachings, religious beliefs, and culturally established norms to justify their backlash. They are also driven by the devastating stories of those who grieve the suicide of a loved one to add momentum to the spread of hatred and repulsion in people’s minds towards the prospect of granting the severely mentally ill the freedom to choose the timing of their own death, despite the intense amount of emotional, psychological, and psycho-social suffering that these troubled consumers may find themselves enduring regularly. Those against Dr. Assisted Suicide for the severely mentally ill often act on the presumption that no such suffering is worse than the self-directed extinction of those pain-stricken lives and its impact on bereavers, and that it is therefore necessary to use any resources at hand (including the most brutal, forceful, and degrading if necessary) to suppress any effort made by someone with refractory mental illness that could ever lead to such outcomes.
On the other side of the dispute on the legitimacy of Dr. Assisted Suicide for the mentally ill lay those with refractory mental illness who resent the oppressive measures that the mental health system in their locales takes to deny them any access to euthanasia. This faction involves many individuals with severe mental illness who have diligently put themselves through years of treatment that have not yielded adequate or sufficient coping resources (if any at all) to bring about the strength of mind they need to turn their lives around into ones remotely worth living; It involves numerous consumers who face considerable struggles, for prolonged periods of time, to function within society in such ways that they can afford to fulfill their basic necessities (such as food, shelter, self-care tools) or to earn and maintain privileges within mainstream society (such as employment, relationships, resources for recreations, etc.) that would give their life meaning and would help counterweight the darker side of their lives; it involves those who are ostracized for facing considerable difficulties controlling behaviors, compulsions, or impulses that lead them to violate cultural norms of behavioral propriety or universal codes of conduct on a regular basis, thus “earning” them bad karma and negative consequences that they are not necessarily ready to endure without added suffering and distress, leading the subject into an ever-worsening dysfunctional life in the form of a downward vicious cycle that only worsens symptoms and life circumstances over time. In sum, a large number of people who favor euthanasia for the mentally ill are those with mental illness whose conditions have made their lives unmanageable, despite all efforts they may have made to overcome the distressful living challenges that so often torment them. It also involves those who have lost all strength to tolerate any more pain and suffering in the short term, and any more uncertainty for the long term, and therefore find it more beneficial to end a life of torment than to continue an uncertain, treacherous path to recovery that does not guarantee relief or access to the resources and privileges that make living worthwhile and enjoyable.
ABOUT THIS SITE
The purpose of this site is to bring about change in the way that our world at large perceives euthanasia for the mentally ill. This site is in full support of euthanasia for those with refractory mentally illness, and it aims to condemn the current oppressive measures and abusive practices that clinicians in the United States and the world at large support to forcefully preserve the lives of the severely mentally ill who wish to put an end to their recurrent torment through euthanasia. In this site, we believe that those with refractory mental illness have every right to choose the timing of their death and that no clinician, regime, or government has any ethical ground to take those rights away from them, especially in consideration of the fact that refractory mental illness cannot be cured nor is it responsive to any available form of treatment in the vast majority of cases.
This site also aims to help bring about change to current oppressive policies forbidding those with refractory mental illness from being euthanized at their request. In this site, we believe that the amount of pain and suffering of an individual with severe mental illness should be taken into consideration as part of their treatment and that the answer to eliminate their pain, when unresponsive to drugs or cognitive-behavioral methods of treatment, should be death rather than on-going recommendations of more drugs and more ECT or TMS sessions that, in these cases, have failed to yield positive results again and again.
DISCLAIMER
This blog is not intended to be used as a channel to engage in illegal activity of any kind. This blog is not designed to give advice in handling suicide methods and affairs, nor in encouraging suicidal subjects to end their life on their own efforts or through illegal means. All mental health or other safety concerns are always encouraged to be brought forth to a certified mental health institution. This blog is solely intended to bring awareness to the issues mentioned above and to help anti-suicide policymakers and activists understand that suicide prevention programs and measures which are provided by force, and not consent, are unfair measures of oppression and stranglehold whose coercive nature can not only traumatize their target patients, but may oftentimes fail to perform any lasting, helpful, and therapeutic function in the long run. In order to maintain the legal standing of this blog as a channel of opinion in support of the Legalization of Assisted Suicide for the Mentally Ill, all messages or posts soliciting the above or other illegal activity will be deleted.
I, the creator of this blog, am not responsible for any choices that its readers make, legal or not, as a result of reading the content of this blog. Everyone who reads this blog, or writes for it, acknowledges this disclaimer in its entirety.