Speaking as someone with depression who is resistant to medication as well as to taking SSRIs because I get bad side effects - I don't believe that. I believe that not all options (including non-medical) are even offered by most doctors. And not all circumstances are fully examined.
Euthanasia in Canada, Supreme Court Ruled this Morning
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Speaking as someone with depression who is resistant to medication as well as to taking SSRIs because I get bad side effects - I don't believe that. I believe that not all options (including non-medical) are even offered by most doctors. And not all circumstances are fully examined.
I don't know if I will ever be totally depression free myself, even. I take the good with the bad. But having principles to fight for keeps me going. The right for a doctor to end my life isn't one of them. That is just not their place - I would trust them even less to look after me.
Northwind
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I'm glad you do not want to end your life Kimmio. I'm also glad you are fighting for your principles. No doctor will end your life without your permission and without having gone through an extensive process first. Again, this is about assisted suicide, not euthanasia.
@InnanaWhimsey ain't likely to happen. I prefer a thoughtful melancholia (blows a kiss to Dr. Freud and Dr.Jung from the couch)
They may decide that. It's professional's job to disagree (otherwise they are enabling and creating a barrier to wellness). I think in most cases that's an irrational distortion (and I say that as I myself experience depression but refuse to let my emotions as much as I feel them when I do, render me hopeless - and I certainly wouldn't let anyone else tell me so). I don't believe it's anyone's job to agree with them that their circumstances are hopeless no matter how bad they feel. Doctors can't predict the future and depression may be tough to cope with but, even so, is not a terminal illness.
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Lastpointe
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Kimmio.
Thepoint you just made, that you are prepared to live with your depression is key
If someone is ok with their condition, this will never be an issue
The issue will always be when someone feels they have no more hope, no future
We may all disagree on what that may look like and i expect a law or regulation to have lots of steps to meet but it does become personal.
This ruling, whether you agree or not, is basically saying that the law can't say that a competent person is not in charge of their own life
I agree. A competent person is in charge of their life.
We want them to choose hope and life
They may not
I am concerned about the disabled, daisy' s son Matthew or my mother in law who are people , not competent , who will continue to be stuck in stasis. However i really see no answer there
Thepoint you just made, that you are prepared to live with your depression is key
If someone is ok with their condition, this will never be an issue
The issue will always be when someone feels they have no more hope, no future
We may all disagree on what that may look like and i expect a law or regulation to have lots of steps to meet but it does become personal.
This ruling, whether you agree or not, is basically saying that the law can't say that a competent person is not in charge of their own life
I agree. A competent person is in charge of their life.
We want them to choose hope and life
They may not
I am concerned about the disabled, daisy' s son Matthew or my mother in law who are people , not competent , who will continue to be stuck in stasis. However i really see no answer there
Pinga
Room for All
@Lastpointe , I liked your post earlier about your mother-in-law not because of the situation, but because of the challenge it presents. I would want to choose death for that situation, but I don't think that it would be allowed.
I don't think I am competent to decide because I am not competent to know what the future holds a month from now, or a year from now. Neither is anyone else. I think the chance is so strong that a depressed person could change their mind or feel better - have a breakthrough and make changes in their life - or feel some hope - that doctors should never indulge their wishes.
ChemGal
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You are making decisions though - competent or not.
I am competent to be aware if I am feeling depressed, and how so on a 1-10 scale. I am not competent to give a 'prognosis' that there is no future hope for improvement. Neither is a doctor.
Delightful Life
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the word competent here is a legal term
it means that legally you are responsible for yourself -- so you can vote, be sued, hold a driver's license...
which is completely different than what you have written above, the ridiculous theoretical notion that just because you can't see the future...
Lastpointe
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My mother in law was a gem. A true gem. I loved her dearly
She made a life here in canada for her family
She was wonderful. Brilliant. Took jobs as a lab technician in canada as she just didn't fit the model of chemical engineer. Eventually though she taught at both Western and Fanshawe
But really she would have loved to be a pastry chef
But herfather said no and so she studied engineering.
She is quite a role model. And a great cook
It hurt us all that she died a curled lump , incoherent body in a bed. On the other hand, her life had some purpose for my father in law and he was husband
But Alzeimers will never be covered. Even though most of us will die of some sort of demensia
Right. I am responsible for myself. No doctor should be responsible for ending my future. They are not competent to give a prognosis that I don't have one. Depression (the biochemical presentation of it) on it's own never leads to death. It is the distortion of decisions that does.
Delightful Life
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you are allowed to hold any opinion you want to
legally, you can't give a medical prognosis
a doctor, legally, can
and yes, a doctor can, using their expertise (since reality is empirical and not 'wham! bam!' all the time miracles...miracles are such because they are rare, otherwise, they wouldn't be miracles) be legally competent to make a prognosis of the future of health of the client...
again, nothing has really happened with the supreme court ruling -- no laws have been made
the 'what does it mean', 'what is the law', etc etc will now be worked out
What?!? So would you trust a mechanic to tell you when to stop fixing your car or is s/he not competent to do so because some imaginary technology may be invented in a decade or so that could breathe some life back into the car?
Bully for you that you CHOOSE to live with your depression. Suffering is personal as I described in my example of migraines. I'm glad you can control your depression but then you see it as a quirk and are content to have it. I see it as a huge ordeal, a disability and incredibly painful (Physically and mentally I might add) - I see what you are saying as incredibly patronizing and myopic - that somehow you know what is best for me because you have depression? Yet you don't think that an MP who is a quadriplegic can speak for people with physical handicaps because he is somehow not meeting some criteria but you with "mild" depression can make that decision for me who has more than just depression?! Would you be ok with me telling you to buck up and get a better paying job that if I had to walk with a cane I would do just that and make a bazillion dollars or that you should just try herbs or other such nonsense?!?
Just because a "cure" may be found in a decade does not mean that I want to/should/choose to suffer for that decade. I am so angry right now. I have no money problems, have a loving husband, really good friends, purpose in my life and psychologically I hurt - a lot. I see this as no different than a person who has terminal cancer and is suffering. I have listed at least once all the things I have tried. There is nothing more that can be tried other than perhaps implanting a pacemaker-type device in my brain to see if it can jolt me into thinking "right" but it's not something I really want to do - my Mom had brain trauma five years ago and it was minimal but it sucks pretty bad.
Right now the pain ebbs and flows and I ride it but if it comes back for months again (the highs hurt as much as the lows for me) - I'd really like to have the option to choose and to do so with dignity.
Well...that's one of the reasons I disagree with the 'mental illness' model of depression in the first place. It negates other factors and possibilities, and as such I think creates dangerous distortions about things like hope for recovery.
Northwind
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A professional can disagree as much as they want. It is ultimately up to the individual to make their own decision. Quite often, people will do things that go against professional opinion. That is not just in mental health. Health professionals are not magicians.
Likely in that case then, this would be recognized and the person would not be considered competent to make that decision.
True enough. Unfortunately, there are people for whom it is a terminal illness. Robin Williams comes to mind. If he had MS, people would be saying he'd lived a long life for his condition. Perhaps we have to recognize that he decided to end his struggle. He clearly made it without other's knowing because that was his decision. Who knows if a doctor would have helped him if he needed assistance. The fact is, it is not the government's place to tell him what he can and cannot do. That is what the court has decided.
Lastpointe
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Feeling for you justme. I wishcould help
Delightful Life
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again, it is ASSISTED SUICIDE and not EUTHANASIA :3 the PATIENT will be legally responsible for their suicide
again, no law has been decided. all of the stuff that you are worrying aboot will be gone over. have some trust in people's confidence & the system; no, not blind faith, trust.
(there are even people whose jobs are to bring up what you are bringing up, but in a more professional and empirical way that can lead to actual policies...these people will be working on it...)
btw, 'you don't have to have an abortion if you don't want one, but other people have the right to have one and feel aboot it in any way they want to'