Here’s a breakdown of what the essay “My former best friend’s death was a blessing” was about: how the writer (a normal) saw her former best friend fall into mental illness and then die…and the writer (the normal) said it was a “blessing” because she had become so deteriorated that there was no hope for her. I find this appalling. The magazine deleted it and replaced it with an article, but the damage has been done.
Out of the ashes, though, survivors of mental illness came forward to tell their own “hopeless” tales. I read the one below and found it to be quite compelling, in particular!
And here’s Gawker magazine asking the author what was going on in your head when you wrote that link (author still stands by her article and doesn’t get the ‘extreme’ backlash):
Once, I was psychotic and I could barely sleep through the fear and voices. One night I had a beautiful dream. My mother came by to talk to me, she knew I was convinced there were assassins after us. I told her, “I dreamed I was enrolled at the University. I dreamed I was taking a Flamenco dance class for credit.” I laughed, it seemed so absurd. Then, I cried, it seemed so far out of reach. I held on, mostly for my family. Years later, I stabilized, transferred to that exact university and graduated. You just never know!!
I tracked down a cached copy of the original article. The woman who died had sza. The author of the piece had not spoken to her in half a decade, just hate-read her Facebook posts.
She decided her death was a blessing because her home was messy, clothes were not immediately put away, and she didn’t date.
The article was awful, with zero insight or compassion.
Snoopy @Rhubot strikes again! Thanks for filling in the blanks for me. My buddy’s situation was markedly different than this story. I misread what was posted. My bad.
The Gawker witch was just as bad. F those click bait prostitute “journalists!” Go back to your whiny little MySpace diaries where your ■■■■-heads belong!
Typical insensitivity of normies to people who are mentally ill. Indifference of the world. Print is a different matter from speech. You can kill with words.
Regardless of how insensitive and ignorant the original articles was, there is a difficult topic it touches upon, or so it seems to me.
In my country, on a case by case basis, it is possible for people to effectively be assissted in dying. I say effectively, because the rules are rather complicated, it is not as if a doctor gives a cyanide capsule that ends it immediately, but very high dosages of morphine may be involved. As said, such is decided on a case by case basis, and experts will take much time and effort to establish whether the patient is suffering unbearably, what the prospects are, what the quality of life is and such things.
This is an option only for physical illnesses. and dementia - the latter is, as far as I know, not quite classified as a mental disorder like for example depression, or schizophrenia.
There are people around here voicing the opinion that mentally ill patients should have the same rights when it comes to this.