Society´s right to intervene

[Saraane]

I'm going to be honest here, it seems as if you are,

 

A: Angry at society and trying to get someone to take the opposing side to yours JUST so you can vent at them.

B: Trying to receive justification for yourself in your attempts or thoughts of suicide and your resistance of "the man".

 

Please correct me if I'm wrong but that does seem to be what it looks like.

 

As for some peoples argument that it's OK as long as no one is hurt, someone is always hurt... if the person had any close emotional connections whatsoever... those loved ones will be hurt.

 

And losing a friend to suicide is not something you can just put a bandaid on and move on. It sticks with the person for the rest of their lives... they always wonder if there was something they could have done to help...

 

Yes, I did lose someone.

[LadyMilla]

Take base jumpers for example. People who seek thrill and adrenaline highs by jumping off high cliffs and buildings with a parachute. The jumps are so low that the parachute barely has time to open and so there is a life threatening risk involved every time, but then again so it is with normal para jumps aswell. For its dangerous nature base jumping is forbidden in some countries and individuals caught doing it are arrested and hauled off to prison. So the society has decided that everyone should stay safe and all extreme sports and things or actions that might harm you are banned. Why then is smoking still legal? Isn´t smoking just a slower way of killing yourself?

 

There is a wider question of individual liberty here. To whom does your life belong? Does it belong to you or the state? If you are not free to do as you please, then you belong to the state. You are property of the state and you have no right to harm or endanger that which belongs to the state.

 

You seem to forget something: you say that you have the right to risk your own life. But you also live in a society and your actions send a message to others and its effects cause 'ripples'. The jumper may say, I'm an orphan, I don't have a family and in my will I made provisions for my burial. But it's not as simple as that. If he jumped from a building that is not abandoned, the guards will be held responsible. The person who finds the corpse may suffer a mental shock (or even a real one and die). Even if you save money for your own burial, the police will need to investigate (call in a coroner, etc.), which cost the society money.

 

If the jumper has parents and family, the effects are even stronger (grief for the parents and the family, also the family may face financial difficulties because they lose his revenues, the children will suffer mental trauma, and so on). If he was a cubicle worker, he won't cause much disruption for his employer, but if he was an important key figure in a small company, his death or impairment may have a severe impact on other people.

 

Long story short, while the liberties of the individuals are valuable, a society cannot function if its members believe their actions and the consequences of their actions are somehow isolated from the society as a whole. Successful people inspire others to try and follow their example. Bravery of the soldiers may inspire others to volunteer and defend their country. But bad example may also inspire others to follow. 'One fool makes many'.

 

[Jopo1980]

So, it is acceptable for a soldier to risk his/her safety and life, but not for the civilian? A soldier who dies in Afghanistan is a hero, but a base jumper who plummets to his death when his parachute doesn´t open is only a fool who risked his life for his personal amusement? Both probably leave mourning relatives behind. The soldiers relatives may be proud of their dead son/daughter, but the base jumpers parents are questioned on how they allowed their son/daughter to become such a daredevil in the first place?

 

Why is it that in some professions, risking your life brings on an aura of glory, like firefighters, policemen, soldiers etc. and for the common civilian risking his/her life will probably get his/her sanity questioned?

 

So, if you want to commit suicide in an acceptable way, just enlist in the army and volunteer for a deployment in Afghanistan, maybe some Taliban insurgent will relieve you of the pain of life and get you a hero´s burial back home. Relatives will be proud of you and you got what you wished, a speedy death. There is just one, but, in this plan. The army usually takes psychological tests to all enlistees, to weed out psychologically imbalanced individuals, so a suicidal person might not make it to the army in the first place, although it must be questioned, are all suicidal people necessarily mentally ill? Can a suicidal person be of completely sound mind? I think it is completely possible that a perfectly sane person might be suicidal, it is not always a sign of mental illness.

 

 

Oh, I noticed that some had voted yes to governments right to intervene in the case of violence to own property. So these people believe that you do not have the right to burn down your own house or smash your TV-set or destroy your own computer? Why should the police intervene in any of these cases? If no other houses are in danger, then surely the owner has the right to burn it down at will? If the owner wants he/she can have the house torn down and nobody will stop him/her, there is no psychological evaluation preceding a decision to tear down a house, nobody will question the owners sanity then. Also I doubt that the police are too interested in somebody wielding a sledgehammer to his/her own TV-set. As long as it is your property, you can do whatever you like with it.

Perhaps the only issue with property violence comes with pets, which are technically your property. If you want to get rid of your pet, you have to go to a vet and have it put to sleep in a proper way. I don´t know if they will agree to put to sleep a completely healthy pet, just on the reason that the owner is bored with it. Whether the owner becomes allergic or just gets bored with the pet, there should be a way to get rid of it in a speedy manner, find it a new home or put it to sleep, I don´t care, but somehow.

 

Cheers!

[Aonghus]

Jopo, I have a question that I believe is germane to the discussion you want to have. You begin your original post with the statement, "OK, personally I have been dragged forcibly to the mental hospital 3 times for Psychotic Depression." What are the circumstances that lead to your consultation with the single duty doctor whom made this determination not one, not three times? To the best of my knowledge, since the fall of the Soviet Union, no government on earth will randomly stop citizens on the street and perform mental health evaluations. (O.K. Maybe in N. Korea, but there has to be an exception to every rule. :whistling: )

 

What I'm driving at is that some action on your part brought you to the attention of this doctor. Was a police intervention involved (in which case, contrary to your assertion, your actions had affected others,) had you gone seeking help for depressive symptoms (in which case, why are you grousing about the help that was provided?) or had you gone for help in some other matter and seemingly random questions provoked the diagnosis? (In which case, why didn't you lie, particularly after the first time when you must have had some inkling of what would happen.)

 

If you want to honestly debate the topic, then I am all for it. If, on the other hand (as I suspect) this is an attempt at starting a flame war or getting around explicit instructions from a moderator, I want nothing to do with this (and you should be careful, the ban hammer seems to swing freely around here.)

 

BTW, while you are technically correct that suicide is illegal in the US, it also has the distinction of being the only crime we prosecute only for failed attempts. :tongue:

[Jopo1980]

Aonghus, I was dragged to see the duty doctor after my relatives called the paramedics when they found me in a psychotic condition and after the first time the mental health authorities have kept a constant watch over me, which irritates me a great deal. I don´t like being "watched", having to keep contact with the mental health authorities on a regular basis and if for some reason I fail to contact them, they will seek me out and evaluate my condition, that´s how I ended up being dragged to the duty doctor 2 more times, each time resulting in several months of involuntary hospitalization, which is even more irritating.

 

As for what happened during the hospitalizations, I don´t remember everything, there are gaps in my memory ranging to several "missed" days in each hospitalization, but in general it was NOT a pleasant experience and I am NOT about to answer any questions on those periods. As my neurologist said, it is probably better not to talk about those times and I have not told a single soul about what happened during those times, not even my government paid psychotherapist who is supposed to be trusted with EVERYTHING.

 

As for my suicidal tendencies, the authorities are aware of them and in fact they are sending some people to talk to me later today, but there is precious little they can do to stop me if I am serious about taking my own life at some unspecified distant future date. The only thing that they could do to stop me would be to incarcerate me permanently in a mental institution under 24/7 watch, but that would be unpractical, so they´re not going to do that, so my hands are free and besides, suicide is not a crime in Finland, which is indicative of the more advanced legal thinking found here, I think. After all, punishing a dead man is impossible and punishing from a failed suicide attempt is against logic.

[raatorotta]

I hear you, and i understand you fellow Finnish. They dragged me to mental hospital too. They lied that it would be a regular doctor visit, but when i did go there, they convienced me to "take a tour" in section, but when "tour" was done and i was about to leave, they didn't let me. I was forced to stay there for some weeks until they finally understood i wasn't so suicidal they had thought about. I learned there that I shouldn't never talk to a doctor about my suicidial feelings, that are very common, almost daily. Even i have those thought all the time, i'm not going to do anything, as i simply just don't care am i living or dead.

[Jopo1980]

Hello Raatorotta and welcome to the debates forum. What bothers me is the power invested in a single doctor, that´s all it takes to take away your civic liberties and incarcerate you in a mental asylum, not a panel of experts, but a single doctor can make that call and the doctor wasn´t even a psychiatrist, but some GP at the hospital.

[raatorotta]

Hello Raatorotta and welcome to the debates forum. What bothers me is the power invested in a single doctor, that´s all it takes to take away your civic liberties and incarcerate you in a mental asylum, not a panel of experts, but a single doctor can make that call and the doctor wasn´t even a psychiatrist, but some GP at the hospital.

 

Well thanks.

And yes i totally agree with you about influence of a single doctor. In my case the doctor was also some kind of trainee with not much of experience and she was replacing my usual doctor during a summer holiday. In general, if your mental care doctor fails to make any successful influence on you with writing a lot of recipies (that's all they can do) in short time, your doctor will be replaced by another one that tries to change your medication to something else that fails too, and they take you to some rehabilitation place and there is again different doctor, who knows nothing about previous treatments, and it goes on. I have had about 8 different doctors atleast trying to fix my damaged brain with different depression medications. I been in many places over years during this rehabilitation progress and they have finally started to ask from me (which i wonder a lot) that does this help anything at all. Are they really giving up on this? Yes, the progress has failed, I am still depressed and very very tired. But i just wonder can they really let me go like that? After all these years? Well, there would be still a meeting with psychiatrist once a month, but it's nothing really compared what i have been through. It seems that the society has finally given up at trying to make me a normal person. Maybe because it will be just cheaper to make me retired instead of paying all those rehabilitation treatments.

[Jopo1980]

Yes, it is problematic if you get bounced from one doctor to the other. I just had a very interesting talk with the authorities today. They came to visit me and asked about my suicidal tendencies and whether I was in any short term danger? I told them that as long as my parents live, I won´t do anything to myself, but after they are gone the situation will be different and they were completely happy with that as there will be at least 10 to 20 years before they have to worry about me killing myself, but what happens at the end of those years? If my situation doesn´t change DRAMATICALLY, the risk of something unfortunate happening by my own volition will be near 100%, so there is definitely reason to be concerned. Unless there is a major shift in my personal thinking and philosophies, then an unfortunate ending may very well come to me and I don´t think there is ANYONE who could convince me to abandon all suicidal thoughts and "focus on the positive" and live happily ever after. The authorities acknowledged that happiness doesn´t come from pills, so there will not be a medication to stop me from doing myself in. If they could develop a drug that would inhibit all suicidal thoughts and actions, then they would probably force me to eat it, just to be sure, but there isn´t and besides, such a drug would be MIND CONTROL in the literal sense. Would we want such control?

[Beriallord]

First of all someones medical condition is a personal matter, and none of societies business. If someone has cancer and is perfectly content with laying on their death bed and waiting it out, it is nobodies business to get involved. Giving someone medical treatment against their will is violating that persons rights. When my grandfather passed, he specifically said that he didn't want to be kept alive via a machine, he was in his 80s and lived a full life and said it was his time to go, and such a decision should be respected. He could have been saved with a pacemaker, and probably lived another 5-10 more years, but that was his choice. Edited November 26, 2011 by Beriallord