Should depressed people be allowed to commit suicide?

If they are dug up, it will be to vote.

 

There's only one time where someone should not be allowed to commit suicide, and that's if they're 12+ weeks pregnant.

 

It's pointless to have a "law against suicide" since you can't criminally charge a dead person.

As far as assisted suicide, I don't believe it should be legal except in the case of terminal illnesses.

 

Anybody anywhere anytime. It's their decision, not yours.

 

People who are terminally ill should be allowed to die on their own terms (e.g. physician-assisted suicide), provided sufficient safeguards are in place as is the case in Oregon. Not all of them are depressed. Many of them are grateful for the lives they've lived but don't want to spend the last weeks/months of their life (*)(*)(*)(*)ting all over themselves. I'm not kidding. Preserving dignity is the number one reason.

Less obvious are other forms of suicide. But here's what I'd suggest, and it is moderately different from the status quo: A life must belong to the person, and it is theirs to take. On the other hand, people can be temporarily incompetent to make rational decisions. An extreme case is when a delirious person comes into the ER, screaming non-nonsensically and fighting against the doctors. It seems they are being saved against their will, but we shouldn't let them die. A depressed person is a less extreme version of this. They don't need to be prosecuted for a crime, but if their suicide is unsuccessful they should be evaluated and, if possible, treated. However, that should not mean that they are held indefinitely just because their intention to commit suicide does not go away. You can try to help in the short-term (5150 and 5250 holds) knowing that they are not really making an informed decision, but at the end of the day, it's their life. Being irrational and lacking perspective shouldn't carry a life sentence of being institutionalized.

Fetuses do not have consciousness at 14 weeks last I checked, closer to 20+. What makes you think they do?

 

I think people just have the right if they want to live or die.

 

not always..... but yes many times, which is why I recommend treatment first, but ultimately the choice should be theirs, with maybe a waiting period

sometimes just knowing they could kill themselves is enough to cure them, that is why many that buy a gun for that purpose do not do it.....

.

 

Natural Selection. Harsh, but often needed.

 

No.

And everyone who commits suicide should be immediately hauled off to jail.

 

False, twins reach out to each other at 14. Weeks and know not to touch the eyes.

 

The liberals locked them up in under funded mental hospitals where they were tortured and abused, until Ronald Reagan freed them to go on the streets.

Today the police assist them with suicide and they are not always homeless but that is still barbaric, it should be physician-assisted suicide.

That seems like a good compromise between libertarians, liberals, and conservatives.

 

I think it's incredibly stupid that there's even a reason we have to have a conversation about a person not being allowed to end their own lives with the help of a doctor. It's such an obvious right that it goes without saying. I would think any person who goes on about personal freedoms and rights would be a staunch supporter of physician assisted suicide. It's the one thing that's yours. The only exception would be criminals in jail who I would not allow access to assisted suicide unless they had a debilitating condition. Everyone else should be allowed to make that choice when or if they choose.

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So you've allowed yourself to believe you know what a 14 week old fetus supposedly "knows".

This is why folks who don't know science shouldn't try using science in abortion debates.

 

Oh what have the studies shown? At 14 weeks the fetus reaches out for its twin and none of them touched the eyes. How ever they do touch each other on the head.

If they didn't have some sort of understanding how can they do this?

 

A lot of people support it. I do not.

 

Bull hockey.

It's obviously not a right by any means, and other than terminal illnesses 99% of suicide is unnecessary and the result of poor lifestyle choices. Psychological studies show that unhappiness is primarily caused by having a lack of purpose in life (ex. materialism or addiction to purposeless pleasures like drugs) or a cause to live for, and that concentration camp prisoners who have meaning in their lives are only slightly less happy than billionaires.

A physician who's doing so is violating his oath, and is killing the person rather than doing his job and helping them.

Well that's ironic - the one person who I can actually sympathize with wanting to die, is the one person you think should be denied such a right.

You'd rather a person be psychologically tortured for decades as they slowly go insane staring at that same crack in the wall in their cell than be given an easy way out. But think that an emo kid who's hurt from his first HS break up should have a "doctor" hand him a gun and bullet. Talk about warped

[video=youtube;5Rzpnsox5Vk]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Rzpnsox5Vk[/video]

No one has any means of enforcing laws against suicide, or preventing someone from taking a gun to their head - so they have a right to do so - they certainly don't have a right to be provided a platform from which to do it however.

 

Don't make the mistake of calling the police when someone you care about threatens suicide.

A background to this. Someone I know was going through a difficult divorce and to compound the problem lost their job. In confidence they told me they were contemplating suicide. I called the police, I thought they might be understanding and get him professional help. Police officers pulled up to his home, but he had taken his car out. I gave them a description of the car and the license number. Eventually he was pulled over, put in handcuffs and his car was impounded. He was driven to a hospital and basically "dumped off." There was no empathy at all towards him or interest, he was treated as a criminal and to add insult to injury it cost him $400 to get his car out of the police impound lot. I paid for that since I initiated the situation by calling the police.

Basically, the police will treat the suicidal as a criminal, dump them, in handcuffs, at a local hospital and drive away.

I advise leaving law enforcement out of it entirely unless the suicide threat has escalated...in a nutshell the suicidal are criminalized and treated accordingly. I was shocked to see how cold hearted the police acted towards my distraught friend...essentially forced against his will, in handcuffs to a hospital. I had no idea this was how they procedurally handle things related to threats of suicide...basically as a crime.

 

As you cannot stop a potential criminal only suspecting intentions [you need clues that the subject is going to do something for real to act ...]; I don't see how you could stop a persons just suspecting the possibility of a suicide.

 

Just a question out of curiosity:

is there a country with a law which "prohibits" suicide?

I guess there are countries where attempts of suicide are punished with forced treatment, but how could you punish a subject after the suicide? [Denying to the family a decent entombment???].

Laws against suicide cannot exist, since the punishment for the "criminal act" is impossible just for the nature of the act itself. When a law has got no punishment for the "crime" or the punishment is not possible to be applied that law simply doesn't exist.

 

I'm not concerned with why a person might want to end their lives. It's honestly none of my business. If people don't want to be here, and are actively choosing to leave, the law shouldn't stand in the way. Family and friends can do interventions and try to help just like always, but if that person wants to choose a clinical environment to end their life, it should be an option.

Right. Suicide is not a get out of jail free card, at least not physician assisted suicide. Prisoners would still be free to hang themselves in their cells like they always have.

Who has a bigger right to suicide is not what I'm concerned with. I simply don't want prisoners who earned themselves a long sentence because they committed crimes to be allowed to skip it with a doctor's help. As I said before, they can still off themselves the same ways that have always been available to prisoners.

Sure they do. They can put you in a mental hospital if they even just think you'll commit suicide.

And no person with a terminal or extremely painful illness or condition should be told they aren't allowed to die, and even more than that, they should be given the option of leaving on their own terms, with a doctor's help if they choose it and there are doctors willing to do it. Those are the folks I'm most concerned about, but I oppose the principle of killing yourself being illegal or a means to imprison a person because it's idiotic. A person doesn't get a choice about if or when they are born, but an intelligent sentient creature should always have the right to end their own life if that's what they choose to do.

 

As a libertarian I believe that the right to end your life is crucial to self-autonomy: without it, you aren't your own person. That goes for my family, too.

Now as a Christian and general non-jerk, I'd do what I could to change their minds and prevent them from doing so, without force. Ultimately it's their choice and I do not have the moral right to stop them, any more than I have the moral right to go out and take a whip and force someone not doing what they should with their life to do it.

 

I'd like to also add that I see there is a great distinction that many overlook - it is their right to take their life, and if they make that choice, only they can. It should still be a crime to kill another person, even if that person asks you to.

 

Not sure why, on top of all the other socialistic welfare-circus crap that been injected into our national bloodstream you think it desirable to add free housing for homeless bums, but that's you, and I've been reading your posts for a long time....

But, I do agree with you that the question of suicide does go straight back to individual rights! The matter of voluntary participation in continuing to be a part of life on this planet should be entirely one of individual choice. Suicide may be forbidden by a person's religion, and that is solely between that person and his concept of God, but suicide, per se, should not be held as a crime by the law or government.

I would support, somewhat, the idea that people who are completely out of their freaking minds and obviously not in charge of their faculties should be dissuaded from committing suicide, but, "where there's a will there's a way". The part of the world that is concerned with problems associated with LIVING has other things to deal with. So be it.

 

I completely disagree, we should have suicide booths like Futurama.

 

Heaven is the one who punishes those people
who commit suicide.

 

I weighed in in the beginning of this thread that clinical depression can be treated. At the risk of repeating myself, serious depression is a mental illness. It could be a simple as a chemical imbalance in the brain. Such a condition will preempt the normal rational consciousness. It is unclear that a person wanting to commit suicide is suitably rational to make such a decision. I wouldn't let anyone commit suicide if I could help it.

Great pain is one condition that often causes thoughts of suicide. With all the drugs we have it is unconscionable that we leave anyone in such pain. Not to mention now illegal drugs like heroin which, if legal, could alleviate a lot of pain especially for those in chronic pain.