My take on Euthanasia for mentally ill adults

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'll say this. When I was at the height of my psychosis for two years I would have had a great case in favor of dying. I suffered horribly to say the least. Really. At that time, I was also suicidal. If legal suicide was available at the that time, I’m sure I could have found a few doctors who would have said, “Wow, you are suffering with no end in sight. From what you are telling us, I think you are a good candidate to die”. And it’s likely I would have agreed. That scenario is not far-fetched. I really don’t know how I survived my first year of schizophrenia. But I did survive. But if legal suicide was available in the eighties
I would have missed out on:
(not in chronological order)

Flying across the country a few times and standing in front of the White House, Lincoln Memorial and Arlington cemetery.

Being best man at my dads wedding

Having a girlfriend

Water-Skiing for the first time

Jet-skiing for the first time

Going to concerts like Bruce Springsteen, Bob Dylan, Heart, R.E.M., Pink Floyd, etc.

Driving around in my own (1970’s) Cadillac

Having a few good friends

Being the best worker at a couple of jobs

Eating out at too many restaurants to count

Seeing too many movies to count

Yeah, if Euthanasia had been legal in 1980 I would have missed out on all those things and more.
Because at ages 19-20 I had no logical, discernible reason to go on.
And I’m sure there are MANY, MANY people like me. Maybe not on THIS forum but somewhere out in the wide world there are many schizophrenic people who were hopeless but are now glad that they didn’t kill themselves. Who can look back at age 30 and say, “Boy, I really wanted nothing more then death, but I’m sure glad I didn’t do it”. When people want to die it’s often because their perspective is off. They are going by how they are feeling and not looking at the whole picture. They’re only seeing a part of the puzzle. Everything looks hopeless, the world looks cold. Do these sound like individuals who are in the position to make the right choice about their life?
Hey life goes on. I’m still learning. Geez, at age 29 I was still messing around with crack. I had no common sense. So by the way, if anyone thinks I personally have lived some magical, charmed, mature life; it’s not true. I still had my head up my butt at age 30, destroying cars and lying and cheating. !!! Now things can get a little more mellow for me 25 years later.

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I almost went the suicide route. Had planned to just jump off the bridge in San Fran, thank goodness I never went ahead with that plan. I rode out the depression and chose to face life head on and change my attitude to being more positive

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I nearly died three times, I’m aware I put in my post earlier I felt incline towards oblivion, I wasn’t implying in suicidal, I just need some peace. I’ve come a long way, I’ve got a long way to go. Every day is a battle but I’m glad I didn’t die, I’d have missed out on a many thing. Thank you for writing the sort of post I needed today nick, really thank you!

Take care,
Meg.

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Your argument is one of the best arguments against euthanasia. A person might have terminal cancer, but you never know when that cancer might go into remission. In the case of Alzheimer’s a person might be long past the point where his life has meaning, but is it right to euthanize him? According to the laws of society it isn’t.

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Good post Nick. Thank you for sharing.

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Euthanasia for mental illness is ridiculous!

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In this day and age with as much research going on, and new meds, new ideas, new break-trough’s… I’d most likely be against it.

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It reminds me of this: http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Holocaust/disabled.html

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Aw man this is perfect, I wish I could screen shot this and post it on all the online posts I see by people as young as 12 saying they want to kill themselves. It breaks my heart.

I am so happy for you. I do think that people fail to realize that nothing is permanent, and you have no idea what tomorrow will bring. Too fixated on ending issues then and there.

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i want euthanasia and i should have that right.

And not only me, anyone that wants to do it should be able to. It’s up to them and if they are going to do it they will do it so why not make it easy on them? You can harvest organs and make lots of money for whatever!

I seek barbitol.

I wonder how many people would just put themselves to sleep if you offered it? The number would be high i would imagine. There are many who are completely over this joke of a life. But you can’t have your cattle offing themselves i suppose.

Screw this prison.

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@77nick77

That’s a great way of looking at it. I think we should have the right, but your thoughts actually gave a little insight to it all.

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I would like euthanasia. I know people can hear my thoughts and it makes me so sick I want out.

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I was sure the ■■■■ all for it in 1994-95, 1997, 1999, 2002 and 2003. I even tried to self-administer it in June of '97 and July & October of '02. BUT, I did a sloppy job, and I woke up in the ICU with the consequences.

All that said, I do not agree with those who dismiss the idea out of hand. There are in fact a very few people with mental illness who are truly “hopeless” (usually because they have self-harmed in some fashion so much that the harm + the sz has backed them into a corner they’ll never get out of).

HOWEVER… you have revealed enough of your situation to me elsewhere on this forum to convince me that you are NOT a “good candidate,” and that you stand a very good chance of having a reasonably functional and happy life IF… you…

  1. Get a copy of this book and read it. Have your family read it, too.
    http://www.amazon.com/Surviving-Schizophrenia-6th-Edition-Family/dp/0062268856

  2. Get properly diagnosed by a board-certified psychopharmacologist who specializes in the psychotic disorders. One can find them at…
    Find Psychiatrists, Psychiatric Nurses - Psychology Today

  3. Work with that p-doc to develop a medication formula that stabilizes your symptoms sufficiently so that you can tackle to the psychotherapy that will disentangle your thinking from reality effectively. The best of the therapies for that currently include…

DBT – http://behavioraltech.org/resources/whatisdbt.cfm
MBSR – Welcome to the Mindful Living Blog
ACT – ACT | Association for Contextual Behavioral Science
MBBT – An Introduction to Mind-Body Bridging & the I-System – New Harbinger Publications, Inc
10 StEP – Pair A Docks: The 10 StEPs of Emotion Processing

  1. the even newer somatic psychotherapies like…
    SEPT – Somatic experiencing - Wikipedia
    SMPT – Sensorimotor psychotherapy - Wikipedia

  2. or standard CBTs, like…
    REBT – Rational emotive behavior therapy - Wikipedia
    Schematherapy – Schema therapy - Wikipedia
    Learned Optimism – Learned optimism - Wikipedia
    Standard CBT – http://www.beckinstitute.org/what-is-cognitive-behavioral-therapy/About-CBT/252/

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sometimes when one is suicidal or experience suicidal depression its hard to remember or know that those thoughts DO go away. it just takes time.

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You’re right thank you. I mean if no one else is hearing my thoughts then I have everything under control. And I will buy the book you told me about as soon as possible. Best wishes to you. And thanks. @notmoses

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I know how you feel. I also “want out”. I don’t think I would want other people to administer my suicide, though. I would do it myself. I’ve made a number of attempts. One time I took 4500 mg of Trazodone. Apparently, I am immune to any amout of that drug. I didn’t even fall asleep. One time I had the gas turned on in a rented room. I was going out, but there must have been some kind of safety mechanism on the gas heater, because suddenly the level of gas in the room dropped. One time I had a car running in the garage, but the radiator hose broke. One time I bought a .38 revolver to commit suicide with, but I didn’t have the nerve to do it. I would want to go out peacefully - just go to sleep and not wake up. I’ve pretty much decided to stick it out in this life, but if certain things happen I will definitely do myself in.

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I’m one of the people who used to be really messed up and who got better, a lot better. I have a job I like, the side-effects of meds are bareable (akathisia where I need to pace 2 hours a day and I sleep 12 hours, that’s all), no depression anymore, no sign of psychosis; and I still wish I had died at 13 when I was at my most suicidal, I’m 24 right now. If somebody told me tomorrow that I had a week to live I wouldn’t be too bummed out. If I had to compare life to a game it would be tic-tac-toe. Not to say I don’t enjoy living, but I realize what I’m doing, I’m satisfying a need(or more precisely a part of it) that doesn’t need to exist, very inefficiently. I don’t see any point in creating a desire to live in a person who doesn’t have it. You can’t save a life, only prolong it.

If you truly understand what life on planet earth means, not just your life, then you’ll be horrified. The price being paid for your gratification is huge, both by other humans who are wage slaves in third world countries and by animals(mostly in the biosphere). You can’t just look at your life and say what I’ve gotten out of it. Every night before going to bed I’m so despondent, I think about all the suffering going on, for some reason it really hits me at that moment. What do we have to put on the other side of the scale is silly: sports heroes, mountain climbers; a good orgasmic moment doesn’t justify prolonged torture. It seems to me that the positive feelings are fleeting, they slip right trough your fingers, while the negative like depression, anxiety and also bad physical pain are more ongoing. Also, I doubt there would be too many people who would be willing to take 5 minutes of the worst torture to experience 5 minutes of the ultimate bliss, most people have been like at the very minimum a third of the way to the ultimate bliss but nowhere near the worst torture imaginable. It’s like the emotional scale goes to minus 200 and plus 5 or something like that. You need a whole lot kids eating cupcakes to justify one being tortured. Anyways, I’m rambling now, gonna cut it short.

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Some brilliant comments here on a very difficult subject. When is suffering too much? In this country, we allow abortion because it is asserted that the decision about the body is in the purview of the primary authority of the person who will experience the consequences of that decision. I do not wish to pose as a secondary authority here on this site by asserting whether one should or shouldn’t have access to euthanasia beyond saying that it seems to me that each situation is unique, and needs to be seen and adjudicated as such by the person who is most affected by it.

Still, it is true to say that all feelings are as the ringing of a bell. The bell rings, and the sound slowly dies down over time. This is as true for negative, destructive emotions, as it is for positive feelings. When we are watchful and aware of these wave-motions, we can learn about how they always pass, and take comfort in that sure fact because we know that negative feelings shall pass away. This takes time in the working out, and it won’t work, of course, if you’re dead.

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The worst part is we don’t control our thoughts, they just happen.

You’ll get judged for just sitting there basically.

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You’re right that is how it is. Judgmental hallucinations. And it sounds like the same people everyday for me like they are studying me. Key word though is hallucination I guess.