Belgian chiming in: Belgian law is decent good when it comes to assisted suicide ("euthanasia"). In order to be able to go ahead with it, the patient has to be suffering ("unbearable suffering", per the law), either physically or mentally, and the situation has to be "hopeless".
In general, it's not something that can be done on a whim. You can't walk in to your doctor's office with a depression and come out in a body bag. There's a process, and you need the approval of multiple doctors (or shrinks).
As an addition, for those interested in the topic, Arte TV channel recently released a documentary filmed at an hospital in Liège (in Wallonia, Belgium) following a doctor practicing euthanasia. The documentary, available until December 2022, does not seem to be geo-blocked from the US:
According to other sources, this person with alleged PTSD bit certainly major depression showed capacity for improvement. She boarded planes and went later to Rome for a holiday, boarded plane and almost went for another. (I am trying to find the source in English.)
Now there also was the matter of an alternate specialized treatment group for people exactly in this attack by the university professor, treatment she refused. Additionally the reports tend to be spun to make it seem as if she outran the bomb - she was actually only in the same building far away from the blast.
Most importantly the duration of treatment was too short, she was young and we do not have information on whether modalities other than drugs were used, but if they were, they were too short term. And these drugs that have as black box side effects iatrogenic suicidality.
I believe standards of care were not adhered to. The two physicians writing the opinion were duped or negligent. Unfortunately in mental health cases a lot relies on the medical history which tends to be spotty, and reports from the patient.
Belgium is really special in allowing even very young people to access euthanasia. There was a case of a teen with just mental illness like previously. This girl here was 23.
I haven't heard PTSD characterized as a hopeless disorder before. It's horrible and deadly, but time heals, or at least softens, most such wounds. What could have convinced the psychiatrists that this time it was permanent?
I'm happy to hear that you've seemingly never met anyone who is in extreme psychological anguish. It's horrible. She'd been suffering since 2016. How much more would she have had to endure to appease your inner critic?
She'd been suffering from major depression, panic attacks and suicidality. PTSD was more than likely a convenient excuse for the symptoms for physicians. (Considering other pieces of life history.)
We are talking about a teen into 23 with improperly treated mental health issue here. People get treated for decades for this kind of thing, not 5 years of trying mostly new drugs with side effects to paper over it.
Indeed there are people who physically feel their depression so profoundly that they are barely able to lift themselves from their beds in the morning. Depression has nothing to do with being 'down in the dumps' and has to last more than 2 weeks before it becomes a clinical case.
While suicide might seem like a cowardly way out to some, there are other sufferers who choose to take their chances with electro-shock therapy, which has experienced rejuvenated interest over the past 20 years. It should be clear, however, that anyone pursuing it has exhausted all over treatment and is still suffering to some great extent.
> In general, tabloid newspapers, such as The Sun, Daily Mirror, the Daily Mail (see also the February 2017 RFC discussing its validity), equivalent television shows, should be used with caution, especially if they are making sensational claims.
This article says that her first suicide attempt was after she had been sexually assaulted by a fellow patient at the mental hospital where she was being treated:
Assisted suicide and euthanasia are absolutely not the same thing. There is huge precedent regarding these issues, especially in Swiss law. Also the mirror is trash.
Was she killed by the treatment or the attack? I've seen some very mentally disabled people and I've never seen "11 antidepressants" that's insane and in no way evidence based in any real sense.
"And earlier this year, Shanti chose to be euthanised, a procedure which is legal in Belgium, and died on May 7 after two psychiatrists approved her request."
What is your thinking exactly? That the victim and doctor went up to that because they found it was a good laugh, and a fun joke to carry over 6 years?
Not OP, but as someone who has some experience with anti-depressants, I had a similar reaction.
Antidepressants are tricky. They can take awhile to work, and usually the goal is subtle changes in one’s brain chemistry.
I’m not a doctor and was never taking more than 1-2 meds at any one time, but the article made it sound like the primary things they tried involved “throw some more meds at it”. And these meds can also directly impact one’s emotional state, sometimes to the point that they make things definitively worse.
When dealing with things that happened to us, meds are like a cast or bandage. They help hold things in place while healing happens. Healing from trauma doesn’t just happen by taking meds. It happens by doing sometimes grueling internal work.
> That the victim and doctor went up to that because they found it was a good laugh, and a fun joke to carry over 6 years?
This is a pretty bizarre conclusion.
Obviously none of us have all of the details, but to me, the takeaway is “maybe throwing more meds at this is not the answer”.
To conclude this is not to imply that they didn’t take what they were doing seriously.
She even reflects on this in one post where she mentions that maybe meds aren’t the only solution.
I can't speak for OP. My thinking is, if 11 antidepressants are prescribed, SOME must be the SSRI types that have known side effects of homicide and suicide. I think there is an ethical question of a doctor prescribing both the antidepressants and a euthanization. Even if a separate practitioner was involved for the final decision. I'm not convinced it is possible for a fully volitional decision to be made by the deceased if her capacity were diminished by the antidepressants.
Here’s my question - if the government is going to allow you to legally have professional help in killing yourself, is it also going to allow you to legally try every possible substance which might conceivably make your life bearable enough that you no longer want to do that-including psychedelics, heroin, etc? I’m pretty sure the answer in Belgium (and many other jurisdictions with legal euthanasia/assisted suicide) is “no”, which to me seems deeply perverse.
Nobody would prescribe 11 different drugs in the same class. But some people are on an SSRI, an antipsychotic, a mood stabiliser, an anoxyltic, etc. 11 at once is almost surely an exaggeration, but 4 at once is not unheard of (generally considered to be outside of best practice except in exceptional situations, but often not so severely outside best practice that the prescriber will be disciplined.)
I mean, it’s a news article, so I take the “facts” they lay out with a pinch of salt. From experience, finding a working drug is hard, sometimes impossible. Sure, if she was on 11 at once, that would probably be extreme, but even then I’d rather trust her doctors than my own lay opinion.
As someone with experience with antidepressants, if my doc had me on 11, I’d be talking to new doctors.
You could be right and this is an exaggeration, but it’s a quote directly attributed to her, and it’s the only info we have. Otherwise we might as well not discuss any of this.
I don’t think any of us have enough good info about this situation to form solid opinions, but I do think the circumstances sound like they need more scrutiny.
I hope it's was just some hyperbole from a mentally distressed woman. 11 antidepressants would cause stuff like serotonin syndrome. It would make you sick for sure, I don't know what else it would do.
I knew someone on psych meds through her teens and twenties. She started hallucinating, and I told her it was probably the shitload of drugs her shrinks were giving her. She had so many pills to take, it was like she might run out of room for food. Her school nickname was Pillbottle.
She started using THC (hadn't used it even recreationally before then), and weaned off using her meds. Not only the hallucinations stopped... so did a LOT of her other symptoms. She became way more normal than I ever knew her as being, and got in a few years of full time employment doing public speaking to some surprisingly high level audiences.
The more meds she was taking, the worse her mental health got. One pill made her keep sticking her tongue out. Another pill countered that reaction. And so on. So, eleven different meds is entirely possibly what the person in the article meant.
Not surprisingly, cutting off the handfuls of pills brought my friend back to Earth, and now she's using more human (non-chemical) therapy-related efforts to help her mental health.
She would have eventually killed herself if the drugs didn't eventually poison her first. Now she's pretty much down to suffering age-related aches and pains instead, doing native Powwows, and fending for her demanding and shockingly obese orange cat. She still has the borderline personality, but living a much better life.
In her words "less crazee!" without all the pills.
Honestly I wish someone gave her ecstasy and maybe some speed to kick her out of her slump. Or maybe something more drastic, a heroin habit to give her a reason to wake up the next day after which she could rehab her way to regular life.
You do not understand how these drugs work. MDMA is rather similar to certain SSRI in action, if stronger and shorter lived. Which she was already on. Heroinists with depression tend to shoot a final overdose.
The remaining thing to try would be hallucinogens. LSD, psylocibin or perhaps ibogaine. These are different and unpredictable enough to maybe work. And this is a case where, since it is otherwise bad enough, even electroshock therapy could be of value.
Since these are way past typical options and probably now banned, they would require special handling.
(Assuming VR therapy and standard CBT have been exhausted. And TMS showed no improvement.)
You’re never going to be able to recreate the combination of factors it takes to get out of depression in a lab. She could have taken some ecstasy, gone to a rave, met someone and completely changed the trajectory of her life. Same with speed- become temporarily manic and do something completely different. Most heroin addicts die from an overdose, you’re underestimating how much an addict looks forward to their next fix, nothing else matters. I’ve seen this anecdotally many times though anecdotal experiences only hold so much weight. At the end of the day what did she have to lose if she was going to be euthanized anyways. People take drugs to deal with problems and this is a problem. Hell, give her a huge dose of ketamine and put her into a massive k hole, people with depression respond fantastically to that.
I would never give hallucinogens to a depressed person, that could be enough hell to break someone’s mind permanently.
First, she claimed to be on 11 antidepressants, I doubt it but I bet she was on a few. ecstasy and many anti-depressants are serotogenic and you'll give her serotonin syndrome. You really don't want to screw with that, there's reports of ecstasy users ended up with permanent depression issues. To lower such risks, you'd want to ween somebody suicidal off anti-d's first to take a drug that's pretty similar to anti-d's in the first place. There's some recent research that shows if you've already done the one you won't benefit as much from the other usually [1] but if you were going to do this I'd taper off some of the anti-d's first.
The idea of taking heroin for mental health so you can go to rehab I think speaks to buying into Hollywood narratives. Hitting rock bottom doesn't help you recover from mental health issues usually, it only makes your mental health worse, look around people who don't have a home and you won't see paragon's of mental health.
I don’t think you have the nuance to understand what I’m trying to say. Yes, some heroin addicts may be on the street but they still have a desire to live and get their next hit. It’s not about “hitting rock bottom”, it’s about being able to find a quick and dirty purpose when you wake up everyday.
I think some folks think that not every available treatment modality was tried and there's a possibility that one could have worked so euthanasia was perhaps premature.
How is that handled inside the ethical framework that governs euthanasia? It must be a consideration.
The government (and society in general) should stay out of other people's business w.r.t. their autonomy in this matter. People should be free to decide if they want to end their lives with dignity.
Your neighbor is planning on investing money saved for retirement in a scheme you know will lose all the money. Do you stand by and do nothing?
I'd say no, of course not. You tell them it's a bad move. You don't give them a lift to the bank so they can withdraw the money.
I wouldn't advocate breaking their arms so they're unable to sign the paper work but there has to be things you can do short of watching them ruin their lives (or actively helping them), right?
Anybody anywhere can commit suicide with varying success and aftermath. Having a clean, sure to work, painless death if you wish it so is a huge improvement over those self made options.
Assuming an implied 'but private businesses should' is not charitable, not responding to the strongest plausible interpretation of what somebody is saying.
It seems like a fair response to me. In the US you can walk into a store and buy a handgun and ammunition and walk out to kill yourself in your car if you'd like - it happens fairly regularly. Often it's described as an unavoidable consequence of freedom.
If somebody said "the government shouldn't flashbang babies in their cribs", it's not charitable or reasonable to assume they're implying 'that should be done by corporations'.
I suppose the question is really whether you have the right to kill yourself, no? And if the answer is yes, then who is allowed to sell you such a service?
I assume someone buying a handgun above .22 caliber has intentions of harming someone with it. Obviously the context of their use matters, but they're inherently dangerous objects that Americans have the right to own. It doesn't seem feasible to stop someone who wants to use it as they would like.
That’s a pretty blanket assumption given the growing number of high caliber revolver hunters. Or the yearly amount of people that buy a handgun for bear protection for an Alaskan fishing trip.
Going down that feasibility line of thought just leads to Minority Report.
What you are describing is the new fear gun culture gripping America and it passes the buck in the wrong direction.
> I assume someone buying a handgun above .22 caliber has intentions of harming someone with it.
The word "intention" is completely inappropriate here.
I don't buy a fire extinguisher with the intention of having a fire. Nor do I buy insurance with the intention of having a fire, getting in a car accident, or getting sick.
Most guns in America are never used to harm anybody, legally or illegally. Most are bought for sport or simply to possess them (collection.) Many of them are bought with self-defense in mind (see sibling comment about fire extinguishers) and most of those are never actually used for that purpose.
A 9mm Glock handgun has no purpose that I know of beyond killing someone. And I would imagine that almost every person killed is killed in self defense - even if that self defense is an attempt defend oneself from complicity in a crime. You're most likely right that any given gun will never harm anyone, but what someone does with it after their purchase is up to them.
> A 9mm Glock handgun has no purpose that I know of beyond killing someone.
Target shooting, whether in competition or simply for fun.
Fishermen often shoot large fish (e.g., halibut, which can weigh hundreds of pounds) before boating them, to reduce the likelihood of injury.
Defense against aggressive wildlife.
Defense against aggressive humans that doesn't involve killing them, or even injuring them (very often merely displaying the weapon is enough to deter an attacker).
There are other uses that come to mind.
Perhaps your inability to think of these routine and completely justifiable uses indicates that you have serious deficiencies in your knowledge of firearms, and that you should perhaps make an effort to rectify those gaps before commenting on the subject again. Maybe?
I mean, even your use of "9mm Glock" indicates that most of what you think you know comes from TV shows and movies.
"Glock" is just a brand, yo... the brand name doesn't actually make the weapon more lethal.
In point of fact, 9mm ACP is a rather small and underpowered round. It's become popular with law enforcement agencies because it reduces the weight of the weapon they have to carry all the time, not because it is some fearsome Round of Doom.
I say 9mm Glock handgun as an example of a small semi-auto handgun (and also because I own a Glock 19, which I think of as the gold standard of semi-auto handguns). It is a purpose built machine for killing humans while being easily carried.
I actually have guns for most of the activities you mentioned (except shooting fish - that seems unnecessary, and I've been on quite a few boats), and the Glock isn't ideal for any of them.
I was under the impression that most LEO's used .40, not 9mm because yes, it isn't a particularly powerful round.
Contradicts with freedom, free will, and bodily autonomy. People who want out should be allowed out under some circumstances. Two psychiatrists signed off in this case. How many would you need before stamping approval on someone’s wish to leave this plane of existence? Not a rhetorical question.
I don't know but for the other end of it, where I am, stamping approval to detain someone and prevent them from completing suicide takes one person for 48 hours and two for longer.
Is your issue with Belgium (where this is legal, among other developed countries)? Or legal/government sanctioned euthanasia in general? Follow up question: thoughts on jurisdiction shopping for this when citizens can travel there from a country that doesn’t respect their rights domestically (a tale as old as time)?
Belgians can do what they want, I guess. But we can judge empirically whether their social beliefs are pro-adaptive or mal-adaptive. Belgians are being supplanted by Muslim immigrants who definitely do not think suicide is okay. It’s unsurprising that a culture that doesn’t value life for its own sake is being out-competed by one that does.
Depression can lead to irrational and rational suicide attempts. It's all fine when your depression can get treated. But when you have severe depression where all treatment fails, how is that different from other diseases that cause suffering that cannot be relieved?
The thing about certain mental health issues is that they can get better with actual long term therapy.
I do not believe this happened here, the girl was treated at most 6 years. Describing it as 6 years of anguish is uncharitable to people who survived mental health problems for decades, and even manage to live with them.
It can take years to find out that a certain therapy even works... And here we have people hastily resorting to big red button, even after messing up previous suicide attempts.
I would not call it euthanasia, it's suicide by doctor. (In parallel with suicide by cop.)
If I want to end it, does it have to be messy (as in jumping in front of a train)? Or not well working (as in jumping from a window and ending up paralyzed - which indeed will stop me from further silly attempts)?
The statistics show we may be doing OK on this already. Consider: for every suicide death there are 40 that make the attempt but are caught and treated. And nearly 300 that thought about it but didn't (hotline, friend etc intervened?)
Society has limits on what an adult can and cannot do. Go try to own a nuclear weapon and see what happens.
From drugs we put in our bodies to what pets we can own. We as a western society have decided there are limits on what even adults are allowed to do.
The line is where we argue.
Tia is a different league. Here was a woman that was in a terrible state not known for good choices or good longer term decision making.
Add on to that she is on anti depressants that are known to cause suicidal ideation.
JJ Rousseau said that an individual freedom stops when it threatens the freedom of others.
So having a nuclear weapon is not allowed because you can hurt me.
To some extend drugs may not be allowed because at the end of the day it is the general population that will have to pay for it.
Anything else, including the ability to kill yourself or have someone kill you is up to the individual. Not allowing this is crel and patronising. Worse: people who want to kill themselves will do that in a painful or incomplete way and suffer even more.
As for your last comment: this is the gray area we can argue. I am in favour of letting people choose freely but I can understand that temporary states may lead to a decision which is ultimately not good for the individual. This is very difficult to quantify, though.
The good thing, though, is that one you are dead, you are dead. It is not like you tell yourself that it was a bad decision.
Ah yes, respecting a suffering woman's choice is apparently "disgusting" now. What's disgusting is that a bunch of terrorists decided to kill and maim hundreds of victims. Your vile response to a young woman's suffering is also pretty high up on the disgusting scale.
There's no reason to be rude about an innocent woman's death. Show some respect.
In general, it's not something that can be done on a whim. You can't walk in to your doctor's office with a depression and come out in a body bag. There's a process, and you need the approval of multiple doctors (or shrinks).