Senior men have higher rates of suicide than average, and firearms were involved in more than three-quarters of those deaths in 2021, according to a CDC report
Medical Aid in Dying (MAiD) is only legal in 11 US states.
At best, it requires a diagnosis for a terminal illness with 6 months left to live.
Individuals with an Alzheimer’s or Dementia diagnosis are precluded from being able to make that choice, even if the diagnosis is recent and they still have most of their faculties.
We could be doing so much more to allow people to go out on their own terms and die a good death. It doesn’t have to be traumatic for family members, whoever discovers the body, or those who will inevitably clean up the aftermath.
So the choice given to a dying old man faced with watching his “retirement” and healthcare costs drain whatever meager remains of the estate he might leave behind is faced with this choice:
A) Spend six figures on the various hoops needed to legally kill yourself. B) Spend 40 cents on a really good 9mm cartridge.
Medically assisted suicide doesn’t work in places without public healthcare. You can NEVER be certain that the decision isn’t driven by financial concerns, and like ALL HEALTHCARE IN THE US, its really only available to at least marginally wealthy people in the first place.
For real. Once I retire in a decade or so, I’ll try to live off social security for as log as possible, but once I need to dip into my savings, I’m just tapping my kid’s inheritance. At that point, death is the only financially rational option.
Ever see the show Shameless? Very dark comedy throughout, mostly light hearted content. One episode had me balling. One of the main characters is having memory issues. They were sort of working their bucket list that reunited them with a friend that also had memory problems. The friend mentioned their spouse dying. Main character asks how they remembered. They had it written down on a post-it note on the fridge.
If I had to relive my wife dying every day because I forgot, just put me down.
My wife has a dementia patient for the past year who doesn’t remember being married and having children. She says he proposal to her about once a week. Maybe it won’t be as bad as you think?
I knew someone who made use of a death with dignity law and one of the doctors that he had to see to get the OK legally had to entourage him to take his own life. Something along the lines of “I have to tell you that, instead of a peaceful drug-assisted death, you have the option to forgo eating and drinking until you die.”
The sad part is, some people have done that because in their area there was no legal medical assistance. I read an article a few years ago about a person who decided to go out that way. I can’t imagine how horrible it must be to be clawed by hunger pains for days until death. I’ve experienced hunger for days while waiting on a paycheck, but until death? That’s a whole new level of horror.
We put dogs down every day because they have incurable diseases or are suffering.
I had to put my dog down a few years ago because she was so old she could no longer get up or control her bladder or bowels, and I felt guilty for letting it get that far. I still remember the look in her eyes when they gave her the pain killers to knock her out, she looked so relieved.
I don’t understand how I get to make that decision for a dog, but a grown human, in most places, can’t make that call for themselves and go out in a peaceful and controlled manner. If I knew I was going to die painfully in a few months or a year, I’d definitely take an overdose or nitrogen asphyxiation over the disease. When dogs have a better way out than people, something is seriously wrong.
Too many people think the point of society is so you have others to take advantage of.
There unfortunately isn’t going to be a perfect answer here. I think most people would agree that a 17 year old in perfect health but depressed shouldn’t be able to die and I think most people would agree that 95 year old with a week to live in serious pain should be able to.
Where the line is, who gets to decide, and what criteria they use is always going to be something debatable. I generally think it should be decided by medical review boards and the most important criteria should be consent.
I had someone close to me with a terminal illness use a gun to end his suffering. He had a bottle of Oxy on his nightstand and a gun inside his nightstand and the only reason I can think that he decided to go the gun route was so he was sure that it’d be done. It sucks that he didn’t have any other options available that could have provided a more caring and humane way to exit. Instead now his wife has to live with having found him like that in bed, and my daughter has to live with the fact that she never got to say ‘goodbye’.
“There’s too much identity tied up in one’s work, so that is lost [after retirement]. And then there’s the cultural script of what maleness means in in our culture, so men just won’t admit or won’t receive care for depression because of that sense that it’s somehow not what a man does.”
What use is a cog that can’t cog anymore? Caring for elders is not built into our value system and not protected by our economic system.
Hell, it may be the only way to retire in a few more years.
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Maybe it isn’t about caring for them maybe it’s about teaching them to live with what they have. The skills for being retired are different than the skills of working. The skills of taking care of grandchildren are different than children.
We just sorta assume people know what to do when they get a certain age and maybe that isn’t a valid assumption. I am just thinking of an uncle I had whose health just crashed right after he stopped working. He didn’t add physical or mental work to make up for not working anymore. As opposed to some elderly I know who have loaded up the hobbies.
What use is a cog that can’t cog anymore? Caring for elders is not built into our value system and not protected by our economic system.
Also, what good is “care for depression” when the causes of depression aren’t a “chemical imbalance” but having to live in a partriarchal capitalist society that only values men for what they can provide?
What if constantly calling a system that fails men “the patriarchy” was part of the problem?
What if calling a system that blames all men for a system that benefits a tiny elite was a large reason why so many men are totally dead disenfranchised with the concept? If there was even a one percent chance that was true - would you stop it doing it?
What would you suggest instead? The “kyriarchy”? The “military-industrial-congressional complex”? How about getting fisted by the invisible hand of the market?
It’s a plutocracy, pretty much the textbook definition of it.
So?
We value capital here, not human life.
As an American, shouldn’t our glorious free capitalist market celebrate these depleted capital batteries taking themselves out of the equation and lowering the tax burden on our beloved job creators requiring social supports once they can no longer make them money as fast food employees or store greeters?
What kind of Americans would put value on human life that can no longer generate private shareholder value? Smh, ya’ll need to find supply side Jesus.
To be fair though, the common method is as American as
apple pie baseballvast homeless tent cities. 🇺🇸🎶 Oh say can you seeee…today’s mass shooting on teevee… 🎶🇺🇸Is this for or against free choice for medical suicide?
The level of sarcasm is too high too understand for me >.>
Well see, capitalism isn’t about productivity. It’s about maximizing capital. More consumers means more spending, and more money moving to people maximizing capital. So… Capitalism hates the death of consumers and loves procreation even more.
But you’re only a consumer if you have money to spend. If you’re broke, you’re out of the market.
No no no, we must keep them alive on life support for as long as their bank balance remains. Them after that we shall keep going until their entire family line is in debt to us. Brilliant!
To be fair, each additional person is a net gain for society’s wealth on average.
From earnings and potential earnings, people are. The elderly are the worst consumers by far, any piece of shit proud sociopathic capitalist will tell you that.
Worst? Well, it depends. 🙂 When the elderly are so fucking far gone, their minds are gone, and they require to be put into a home…if they happen to have built up wealth…it is extracted from them pretty quickly. They’re a consumer on steroids, providing jobs & income to others. A decent nursing home where I live will run $70K annually, and that doesn’t cover medications. Divide that by 365, their family is shelling out, at bare minimum, $191 every single day for them to “live”. That’s a lot of cash!
Leftists can’t do math, or they wouldn’t be leftists.
You really don’t need to talk that way.
I genuinely wish I didn’t.
But Alas, this cruel nation makes respect impossible for me, and in lieu of any power, my only solace is making mockery of our unrepentant oppressors and this exploitation camp of a “society.”
Everyone saying it’s ridiculous to prevent people from killing themselves needs to keep in mine that these rules are generally in placw to prevent vulnerable people, including and especially the elderly, from being convinced to kill themselves so junior can inherit their house. People are bastards and absolutely will take advantage of more lax euthanasia laws to rid themselves of “troublesome” or “useless” people.
But I want my kid to inherit my house. I’ll be damned if I piss it away on a bunch of entities compelling me to stay alive so they can drain everything I’ve accumulated. Fuck them. End me while there’s still something left.
Yeah… this isn’t “it’s my time, I’m ready”, this seems more “I live in a system that has made my every waking day a depressing and fear filled nightmare, convinced of my own worthlessness, with death as my only release”.
Evolution has never stopped. Humans are simply creating new selection pressures. Humans are cruel to each other so that some will kill themselves. This will remain the case until cooperation becomes a dominant survival strategy.
Damn dude. I think this too and it’s crazy to see someone else explain this.
Idk… sounds too much like social Darwinism
Yes but evolution is natural, this rat race that pushes people to suicide it’s entirely fabricated.
Well, cooperation is a dominant survival strategy. But that does not mean it’s fair or that everyone will be an even slightly equally beneficial party.
Good job in taking a serious issue and putting an unnecessary partisan spin on it, CNN. The issue of guns needs to be sidelined when talking about issues as serious as suicide.
https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/suicide-rate-by-country
I don’t really see the problem with elderly people who decide they want to check out. If we allowed medically assisted death, they could die with dignity.
Most of it is caused by depression, not terminal illness.
Still need the option to check out on your own terms.
what about improving their material condition so they can enjoy being old like other people in civilized countries???
These are not mutually exclusive.
I imagine in many cases depression caused by their failing bodies and inability to lead a happy life due to it. That and their partner probably recently dying.
Doesn’t change my opinion
If Republicans actually gave a shit about mental health maybe we wouldn’t have so many gun suicides.
Or suicides generally.
So suicide is a republican problem hey.
Get a grip. Stop using every topic to gain political points, it’s disingenuous.
They’re the ones who keep saying “it’s not a gun problem it’s a mental health problem” and then doing fuck all to improve mental health, so yeah.
In this instance they are actually correct
If you understand suicide even a little bit you would know men do not fuck about when it comes to suicide. There is little in between, no cry’s for help they are rare. guns are a tool to achieve the outcome and the statistics will never change.
So this click bait title and stupid anti-gun garbage does not help and makes the issue harder to resolve. Men will ALWAYS be the higher suicide rate no matter what. Social support systems and mental health stigma for men needs to change.
Up next water is wet.
But they still won’t vote for comprehensive mental health coverage, and most of the men in the Republican party are poster boys for toxic masculinity.
So? You’re obsessing over a political farce unless you want to join the party?
I have a problem with blatant hypocrisy. Every gun nut in this thread saying “it’s not guns it’s mental health” and “men have a mental health crisis” and then go vote for assholes who do nothing to help either of them, and then say it’s the Democrats who are the problem.
Your oversimplification was unnecessary the first time, stop copypasting your comments.
Said the asshole adding nothing to the topic to wedge anti-guns
Yeah but then they’d have even more mental gymnastics to do with bootstraps and all that
Suicide isnt reported in many places, because it is a social and religious taboo. For example the greek orthodox church still refuses to bury people who killed themselves(and 99% of greeks used to be christian orthodox, though atheism is becoming more popular nowadays).
Do they still refuse to bury unbaptized kids as well?
Only if they were allowed to bugger them first.
Guns always make any situation worse.
Suicide is a problem around the world, guns or not. Focus on the issue, not click-bait titles.
It has been repeatedly and conclusively demonstrated that means reduction (which the pro-gun community won’t allow) and survivability (which guns don’t have) play an extremely important role in suicide prevention.
Guns are absolutely part of the issue. Unfortunately, the pro-gun community prioritises sweeping gun deaths under the rug to maintain their profits and possessions over actually protecting anyone.
You like to talk a lot about studies and data without actually providing studies or data.
Just reading through your profile is just a mess of “it has been proven”, “debunked”, “repeatedly shown”, etc., etc., or just the simple “no, your wrong”.
Quite honestly, it’s weird. While we all tend to use simple phrases during a discussion, I also like to at least provide a link or two or have a study within reach to back up my assumptions.
Your motivation is simply to piss people off, it seems.
It’s not my responsibility to spoon feed you information and you shouldn’t be trusting posts on social media just because they do.
There’s no better way to feed people dogshit than studies and graphs stripped of context.
It’s not about spoon feeding me information. It’s about validating your own claims.
Also, links on social media are completely visible and transparent. You should know exactly what they link to and were information is hosted. A good study will generally have good sample sizes and plenty of peer reviews.
I have validated my own claims, to my own standard, under my own volition. That’s why I hold this opinion in the first place.
You either haven’t, or have chosen to dismiss the evidence because it’s inconvenient to the opinions you want to hold.
Also, links on social media are completely visible and transparent. You should know exactly what they link to and were information is hosted. A good study will generally have good sample sizes and plenty of peer reviews.
It’s not stupid to click the link, its stupid to let someone on the internet assure you they’ve provided all the context you need.
The British medical journal Lancet published a study back in 1998. It’s had hundreds of peer reviews. Does that mean that if somebody links it on social media, you’ll just accept it?
Because that paper was the origin of “vaccines cause autism”. It has been linked millions of times by a group of people who are spreading misinformation that kills people.
Want me to send you a link next time I see one? You can strut into their midst with links to the hundreds of studies that disprove it.
I’m sure it won’t be a waste of your time and I’m sure every counter argument will be made in only the best of faith.
Suicide by gun is a huge problem, especially since many use guns to murder a bunch of innocent people first before killing themselves. The issue is gun availability, most people can get a gun quickly because of piss poor gun laws.
Many do not, the fuck is wrong with you. The majority of gun deaths are suicides and it’s a single person taking their life.
America has “many” mass shootings because the baseline for other countries is “once a decade”, not because the number has many digits.
You’re either fully aware of this and being manipulative or you reacted emotionally without thinking – not a good trait for a gun owner, but one shared by all the ones who committed suicide or killed their partners.
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Apparently it is “partisan clickbait” because it talks about a real issue in the USA and that rustles their fucking jimmies apparently.
The real issue is that assisted suicide is basically illegal in the USA…you turned it into a gun issue…
how do you see these alarming suicide rates and think " oh we should give them a better way to kill themselves " instead of " why in the hell is that many people wanting to die???"
Because if you understand the stats, the majority of people who are committing suicide are older, and more than likely have a illness they no longer want to live with. I’m all for single payer, but I’m not here to tell someone they should suffer when they want to take their life. That’s not mine or your choice.
Its a gun issue because most people see that as the “easiest” way of achieving it because they haven’t done even cursory basic research into effective suicide methods.
Just because it is illegal doesn’t mean a gun is the only option.
Guns are used in dumb fits of passion because it is easy and at-hand for a lot of people.
If someone wants to off themself, they’re going to do it whether they have a gun or not. Look at Japan, higher suicide rate than the US, virtually no guns in their society. Americans typically use guns because it’s quick and available. Even if guns weren’t available, suiciders are gonna suicide. So yeah, it absolutely is not a gun issue, it’s a societal issue, be it depression or lack of availability of assisted suicide.
If someone wants to off themself, they’re going to do it whether they have a gun or not
Not supported by science nor statistics. There is no better way to reveal that not only are you not an expert, you havent even made a token effort to be informed.
Instead, you’ve just assumed you know everything there is to know about suicide prevention without looking and what a surprise, it just happens to align with whats most profitable for the gun lobby.
Wrong supported by both fundamental social science, and medicine.
Suicide is not a uniquely American problem, nor is higher male suicides. In fact America does not even make the top 20. Depression is the well understood as the leading cause of suicide. Depression has many many factors. From simple inheritance, to money, relationships, drugs, disease, and much more. Those are the causes. The only way to stop it, is mental health services, awareness, compassion, support and specifically for men, breaking the social stigma. Break the generational social contract that makes mental health for males taboo and only then will we achieve even suicide rates across genders.
Oh look you’ve brought genitals into it here too, even though you can’t connect it to anything I’ve said this time, even with your eagerness to make wild stretches based on seeing the words “women” and “suicide” within 3 inches of one another.
As for the rest of your post, once again, I’m not the one arguing against evidence based suicide prevention, the pro-gun people are.
To put it bluntly, you sounds like someone that’s struggling to combine “standing in solidarity with your fellow far-right reactionaries in the pro-gun community” with “doing your duty as a MRA by talking about suicide statistics like they’re women’s fault”.
Spoken like someone who hasn’t had depressed friends off themselves after years of trying to talk them off the ledge. I don’t give two fucks what your statistics or science say about it, I’ve lived it. So eat a bag of dicks and shut the fuck up about shit you’ve only read about on the internet.
Edit: down vote all you want you little bitch. I sincerely hope you take that attitude to someone in real life and they kick the absolute shit out of you, maybe then you’ll realize your sheltered view of the world doesn’t align with reality. Go touch grass.
Edit: down vote all you want you little bitch. I sincerely hope you take that attitude to someone in real life and they kick the absolute shit out of you, maybe then you’ll realize your sheltered view of the world doesn’t align with reality. Go touch grass.
Glorious. Downvotes are actually publicly visible on Lemmy and it wasnt me, but sure, go off.
Don’t get embarassed though, you’re still very big and scary and the “go touch grass” still hurts my feelings no matter how many times right wing reactionaries use it, because I’m that insecure.
Spoken like someone who hasn’t had depressed friends off themselves after years of trying to talk them off the ledge.
I sincerely want to be sympathetic because I do know what thats like.
But its easy enough to swallow that compassion when I remember that you’re only pulling out that trauma and heartbreak to defend gun laws that rob thousands of people of the chance to escape that same fate.
Because you don’t get to “talk people off the ledge” when they have a gun. There is no ledge. Those critical opportunities for help and self-reflectance, that have saved thousands of people from bridges, rooftops and bathtubs full of blood, are all lost.
And the people talked off ledges don’t just find another ledge. Only 1 in 10 people who survive a suicide attempt go on to die by suicide, but the survival rate of self inflicted gunshot wounds is functionally zero.
Its why, if someone you care about is struggling with depression or trauma, the very last thing you should do is give them a gun.
Fortunately for the gun-lobby, the only people gun owners seem to care about is themselves, no matter now many of their children blow their brains out with daddy’s poorly secured firearm that he bought to “keep his family safe”.
I don’t give two fucks what your statistics or science say about it,
it was obvious to all of us :)
Wow…yes it’s the guns fault, not that our society is so fucked that people are offing themselves like crazy…naa it’s the gun doing it. The fuck outta here.
I didn’t say it was the guns fault. Even if we fixed a boatload of societal problems, guns still don’t help these situations, and you’d still have people using them because they’re available.
The idea that they don’t contribute to the problem is laughable.
They do, but they are not the root cause, and focusing on them is a distraction.
Its not a distraction – it’s an immediate, measurable solution to a growing problem, that absolutely nobody is suggesting is the entire solution.
Meanwhile, what have the pro-gun groups that insist they (and they alone) have the solution suggested?
Video games. Marilyn Manson. Rock and rap music. Not enough prayer. Too many doors. Abortion. Legalised weed. Women. Drag Queens and gay marriage. COVID vaccines. Critical race theory. Not enough people having guns.
And what a surprise, every single one of those excuses is just blatantly something they want to attack anyway, using the “look what you made me do” excuse loved by manipulative abusers everywhere.
The boomers blame popular culture. The fundamentalists blame secularism and abortion. The fascists blame minorities. The neoliberals blame their donors not making enough money.
After 25 years of offering nothing by distractions, some marketing genius thought of “mental health”, which is at least part of the problem.
But of course their take away isnt “clearly we are not mentally healthy enough as a society for such permissive gun laws”, nor even “we should do something about the mental health problems are facing”.
Instead, it’s “Other people should build a mental health system that is mandatory for every man, woman and child in America, even if they don’t want help. It has to cure mental health problems, even those beyond our ability to treat, instantly and so completely that they will never relapse, even for a second. Also, we are going to obstruct your efforts every step of the way politically, legally and by telling children they’re less important that inanimate objects used to kill and oppress people”.
Because the idea was never to fix the problem, the idea was to create something that would distract people for 200 years, so the money would keep rolling in.
But don’t worry if the skepticism has already started to creep into your brain with intrusive thoughts like “does this mean we train soldiers to be mentally ill?” or “are they trying to say that being a right wing reactionary like most mass shooters (and gun owners) is actually a mental illness?”…
MTG has already come out and blamed mass shootings on the medication we use to treat mental health problems, ensuring gun owners still have the backup distraction of “too much mental healthcare”, ready to be used the day people meet their impossible prerequisites for gun control.
It’s not a distraction though.
The vast majority of attempted suicide survivors regret ever trying. They get help and live better lives.
When someone is in a bad state of mind or having a depressed episode that is the time when they are most vulnerable.
Having easy access to an immediate life ending device with the squeeze of a trigger is a major problem.
This is the reason jump nets and barriers work on bridges. Making it slightly harder or more inconvenient to kill themselves saves lives.
typical “buh muh guns” response
Ban guns that will fix the mental health problem…
Sarcasm for those unable to spot click bait. Might as well have titled the story “Death the leading cause of suicide among elderly men”…
Why does the US mentality always revolve around a single cause?
It’s clear that the availability of an instantaneous way to end your life on a whim with zero effort and zero percieved pain is going to facilitate a lot of suicides. No, banning it wont stop suicide, but it would absolutely reduce them. To suggest otherwise is simply statistically disingenuous, regardless of how much you have the right to bear them or not.
If you understand suicide even a little bit you would know men do not fuck about when it comes to suicide. There is little in between, no cry’s for help they are rare. guns are a tool to achieve the outcome and the statistics will never change.
So this click bait title is just stupid anti-gun garbage. Men will ALWAYS be the higher suicide rate no matter what.
Up next water is wet.
If you understood even a little bit about suicide you would understand that sucidial ideation proceeds action, and ideation involves stimulus from the immediate locale.
ideation involves stimulus from the immediate locale
locale
What a load of garbage.
If you understood suicide even a little bit you would know that DEPRESSION proceeds action! Wow. The only way to stop suicide is to address the underlying cause: Depression. Depression requires support from, employers, colleagues, family, friends, and most importantly, mental health support services. Its literally that simple. Depression kills all and plenty of studies have found the cause for men is the fact they act on it more. This is not a unique American problem. Why do men act on it? Because its a part of the social and gender values, ingrained into generations.
Toxic masculinity is what you’re describing. It’s very prevalent in the US. Guns are part of that toxic male culture.
Yes?
Oh buddy, thinking it’s 0 perceived pain is something I’d like to understand. Why do people think gunshots don’t cause pain?
Nitrogen ftw.
Let’s see how well it goes in Alabama for that death row inmate whose lethal injection they fucked up the first time.
Is that what they’re doing?
I don’t know how I feel about that. I hate that the state gets to choose who dies, but nitrogen isn’t a bad death.
Imagine feeling like a human for sparing someone a horrendous death.
My friend, we have so long to go.
we should ban rope as well just to be safe
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did the americans find out about lemmy? wtf is this comment section??
Don’t bother with this guy. Ignore his opinions just like everyone does in his daily life.
Everyone’s entitled to an opinion. There’s alot of stuff I don’t agree with op on but I believe he is entitled to an opinion and is entitled to share that opinion and so are you
And you are entitled to ignore it. And so am I. And I’m entitled to encourage you to do that. I appreciate your equanimity, but he’s just a tired idiot angry about his life that loves guns. He’s a t-shirt slogan, not a person.
Guns just add dangerous violence to everything.
In a shooting event, the “good guy” trying to stop a bad guy with a gun can still accidentally hit innocent bystanders with bullets. By adding more bullets flying, they’ve effectively made the situation more dangerous, and now when incompetent cops show up, they’ll think anyone with a gun is the shooter.
In a suicide, you’re not only risking it not working because you didn’t explode enough of your own head, you’re also putting other people in danger, depending on the caliber of bullet and gun used. You could easily have the bullet exit the back of your head and enter your neighbors apartment and harm someone on the other side. You could also live through your attempted suicide and have an even worse life with a totally disfigured face.
Guns make everything worse.
If you need defense in a shooting/violent attack, carry a high-powered flashlight that you can temporarily blind an attacker with, allowing you and others to escape in confusion and/or get close enough to disarm the assailant.
If you want to off yourself, buy a fucking Exit Bag and get some god damned helium.
Guns have nothing to do with this and you fell victim to partisan click-bait. You got perfectly distracted from the real issue of suicide, it seems.
You are making some bold assumptions that a person that is in that headspace actually gives a fuck about anything else or anyone else.
Art imitates life. I equate it to using a weapon as literary device. If you’re reading a book and the author mentions a gun on the table, that gun will be used.
Think of how many minor traffic accidents or drunk arguments at birthday parties result in deadly consequences because just like our author, if someone has a gun, they may use it.
None think about having to clean up all their blood and brain matter left over. Suicide is so selfish.
Ironically your comment is incredibly selfish (you need to walk in their shoes) and based on nothing but your imagination. Some may take precautions to minimize cleanup.
Yes. Many years ago I had an older relative who was terminally ill do this; he did it with a shotgun but went out somewhere on the property where it was easily cleaned because he didn’t want his wife to have to go through that.
That’s the nuance that so many of the arguments in this thread are completely missing. No one requires permission to commit suicide. The world is full of sharp things and high places. What they are fighting for is the right to do it cleanly, in a way that does not inflict even more unnecessary suffering upon themselves or their survivors, and allows everyone involved a chance to say goodbye on their own terms.
I have also known a couple of older people who simply stopped eating and drinking. It worked, it was clean, it gave them most of the clean exit they were seeking for themselves and their families, but it took a week to a week and a half (lengthened at one point by someone who didn’t agree and forced them to drink something as though it were up to them to decide for the dying person). Honestly, if that’s the only choice I have in a similar situation, I will take it as well.
It’s not about the guns at all. Never has been. It’s about bodily autonomy and the need of others to force their own morality down the throats of the terminally ill.
thank you. its nice to hear or in this case read someone put it out so sanely and clearly. I do not get why other people feel they should tell someone else that they have to continue to exist because they know better than them.
I’m probably older than the average on Lemmy, and the older you get the more you see of the reality. I’ve had to take care of a dying parent, I’m aging myself, and the older I get the more I can count on personally knowing people that are having to fight massive battles just to make these decisions in regard to their own lives.
The way I see it, it has absolutely nothing to do with a person and their own choices – which is where the power to decide life or death issues should absolutely reside – but the personal fears of people that are NOT in that situation, but they’ve never addressed their own fears so they need to tamp that down for everyone else. It’s an outsourcing of their own inability to parse the realities of end-of-life situations and care.
This is not just a mere guess on my part, but something that has come from me actually listening and asking these no-assisted-death-ever people. If you sit down with them casually, and ask them questions about what they’re saying, not acrimoniously but in a way that expresses a real desire to know, “What makes you think ___?” and “Why do you feel so strongly about ___?” inevitably, without exception, by question #3 if not sooner, it’s a personal fear.
And not just a personal fear, but one completely unaccompanied by any sense of self-awareness that maybe, just perhaps, someone else might have just as strong feelings about their own demise as that person has about preventing them from bringing about that demise a bit sooner. I have had this conversation SOOO many times now, with kids and grandkids and nieces and nephews who are all absolutely adamant that Granny hang on until the very last possible gasp of air when the truth is that Granny fucking hates her life and every time she’s lucid enough to speak she says she wants to die.
Also, older people generally don’t level this argument: even the ones that are against euthanasia of any form for themselves don’t care too much about other adults making the decisions for themselves, because they’re of an age where they know just how bad it can be. It’s almost always the younger ones who literally cannot grok a living human existence that is so painful and excruciating that someone no longer wants to live it, desperate to believe that there’s medical help, or some kind of fix, or some sort of saving grace, or something. Yeah? Where’s that fix for Alzheimers, or even long term anorexia? Well what about drugs? Nursing homes are not opium dens, lol. And doctors are losing their licenses for prescribing scheduled drugs even when they can prove medical necessity; they’re not going to do it where they cannot.
There are people in this thread posting exactly that kind of nonsense, and dollars to donuts they’re under the age of 50 themselves. Can’t face death, can’t even think about it, anyone who wants out must be weak and a loser, etc. Nope. The only weak among us are those who cannot bear at all even the thought of someone deciding their own death.
In a nutshell, it’s just one more societal case of “you have to suffer so that I can feel good about it and not actually have to face my own fears.”
It’s also selfish to force people to suffer due to our personal moral scruples. Allow assisted suicide.
For terminal illness perhaps, but not mental health disorders. Those are curable.
Not so easily as you say.
Calling people who suffer from suicidal ideation or committed suicide selfish is exactly like calling kids with down syndrome idiots.
No, it’s calling it as it is, selfish. Someone who takes their own life only cares about themselves. They don’t care about the impact it has on anyone else. That is pure selfishness. Get help, your mental health issues are curable.
Yikes.
I try not judge these folks too harshly, they must be in incredible pain.
No, they just need medical help. Depression is a disease that is curable.
And that’s the whole problem. Medical help is so expensive you need medical help after medical help.
Excuses for not seeking help. Every state has low cost mental health options available to the public.
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No, they’re not in pain? Really?
That’s why you seek help.
Someone who doesn’t want help is not going to seek help. Your “solution” is as insane as telling a schizophrenic person to just stop listening to voices. Your understanding of mental illness is both offensive to those of us who suffer from it and just simply ignorant. Until you get a degree in psychology, maybe you shouldn’t be lecturing other people about what they should do about their mental illnesses.
Yes, they do want help. They always want help. The problem is their perspective is clouded. You treat someone who is looking to self harm the same way you treat a drowning person, you pull them out as they cry for help. Most people do seek help, it’s usually those who are encouraged toword self harm, as many on LW are promoting, that attempt suicide.
Yes, they do want help. They always want help.
Is this in your expert psychological opinion?
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That kind of gun-assisted suicide at least, for sure. There’s still deaths of despair that are far from selfish acts, and moreso acts of desperation.
The only suicide that is acceptable to me is when a person is terminally ill or disabled and suffering. Depression is no excuse for suicide, ever. Depression is a curable disease and typically can vastly improve by an environment change.
It’s rare to find a lack of empathy, intelligence together with ignorance in one single comment. Well done.
90% of people cannot afford and environment change, not that such cures depression. Some people are less treatable, and many depression medications actually heighten suicidal feelings.
Those are excuses not solutions.
That’s what you offer. You don’t just magically cure mental illness. Nor do you just magically have money to change your situation.
Helluva lot easier to say when you’re not actively in the depths of it
depression cured by drugs is not a cure and ironically often lead to more suicide since it lightens the depression enough to get the person to take action.
Depression can be cured through various means, sometimes it might be a chemical imbalance, sometimes it’s environmental, sometimes a person might have the wrong perspective. Talking honestly is always the first step. A gun isn’t.
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As a military veteran, I give a shit. Having access to a gun seems a lot easier to those in despair than seeking help. It’s why it’s important we make access to firearms extremely difficult in the future.
this. why does anyone else have a say in if I live or die outside of me. FYI i am not looking to die but when I decide to I want to be “allowed” to. and I don’t give a fuck if someone else thinks the reason is not adequate.
Wall Street is selfish. Taking more profit than you need is selfish.
These people were desperate. Many likely due to rampant American capitalistic selfishness forcing them to subsist on catfood so business crooks can have 2 vacation homes and 5 expensive cars instead of everyone benefitting from market prosperity.
Selfishness is America’s brand, but being driven to put a gun in your mouth and pull the trigger isn’t selfishness, it is largely a consequence of other’s selfishness. Our suicide rates are extreme in the supposedly “developed” world because selfish people demand everything and we let them do it at societal expense.
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