Note: The target audience of this article are those who are part of the campaign for the legalization of voluntary euthanasia for the mentally ill and are mentally stable to advocate for this cause. Please refrain from reading this post if you are facing a serious struggle with suicidal urges as the post’s content could potentially make them worse. Instead, please go to an medical agency that can help you overcome your burdensome suicidal urges. I, the writer of this blog, am not responsible for your actions as a result of your coming across this post. Your actions are ultimately your responsibility.
In many parts of the world, including the United States, suicide prevention programs are venerated for their seemingly warm and kind-hearted nature of their messages of encouragement to those who have lost hope in their lives. Thru public service announcements with cliché slogans urging their readers to reach out for help and avoid committing suicide, or through Hallmark card-looking pamphlets offering words of hope and resources with picturesque photographs of butterflies, sunrises, or other wonders of nature, suicide prevention programs aim to convey a series of messages- that “Life is beautiful,” that “There’s hope for things to get better for the suicidal,” and that “There is help for that.” These messages are conveyed loudly in suicide prevention walks, which are saturated with people holding signs that read, “You are not alone,” “You matter,” “You are loved,” etc. with an air of cheer and optimism, like Care Bears eagerly shedding their beacons on a mission. These outreach efforts are sometimes effective- they draw in people with mental illness who are suicidal and connect them with medical agencies and resources that provide them with the treatment they need to live life they are happy with despite living with a mental illness. Unfortunately for those with refractory mental illness who wish to be euthanized, suicide prevention programs and incentives are not part of the solution to their troubles, but part of the problem.
OPPRESSION
The suicide prevention incentives from suicide prevention advocates and programs often come across as coming from a place of “goodwill,” “love,” and “care” towards the community at large, especially for those who are suicidal. However, the “warmth and fuzziness” of these incentives is only present when suicidal individuals act according to the will of suicide preventing agents- that is, by getting help and/or making a verbal commitment to life and to not commit suicide. If someone who is suicidal refuses to give in to these expectations, the true colors of suicide prevention incentives and advocates comes about. Their attitudes towards the suicidal shift from being caring and compassionate, to being oppressive and demanding to the suicidal person, forcing them to submission to a pro-life, anti-death agenda; their messages change from the character of “you matter,” “you are loved,” or “we care about you,” to the character of “your thoughts don’t matter,” “you are confined to our will,” and “we will command what you are to do with regards to your life” as soon as anti-suicide public forces step in. As stated in a previous post, suicide preventing agents and incentives like parens patriae in the United States are willing to take their suicide preventing agenda quite far, from forcing a mentally ill person who wishes to be euthanized into going to a hospital on handcuffs in a police car, to persecuting them, to breaking into their homes, to seeking them out at their workplace to embarrass them. This is the true face of suicide prevention in many parts of the world, and it hardly resembles the loving, caring, and warm cosmetic appearance that is given to it by suicide prevention advocates in suicide prevention walks, rallies, and propaganda.
Consequences of Oppression
In oppressive countries where euthanasia is forbidden for the mentally ill, suicide preventing clinicians and government forces vehemently state that “Suicide is not an option,” and the police force, handcuffs, and police trucks that they use on the mentally ill who wish to be euthanized demonstrates that such claim is far from a joke or a light-hearted statement. Consequently, such brutal and forceful measures of oppression and restraint have the potential to cause trauma on those with mental illness who wish to be euthanized, especially in times when they are the most psychologically vulnerable. They create an abusive relationship where the suicide preventing forces are the abusers and the suicidal are the victims of the abuse. After all, what suicidal individual could find recovery from mental illness by facing brutality and oppression from swat teams? Also, because the mentally ill who wish to be euthanized are coerced into living by force, they are often treated as though such force is the “consequence” of not feeling the edge to live, and public force oppressors will take their abuses further by using the “lack of clarity of thought” pretext to justify their oppression, thus manipulating the suicidal person they are capturing into believing that they deserve the treatment they are getting, and that their disdain for it is “invalid” or coming from a place of “lack of clarity of thought,” rather than a genuine discomfort with this compulsory and unwanted intervention. To make matters worse, those with refractory mental illness are always at risk of relapsing into crises of suicidal urges all throughout their life, and it would create more agony and distress for them in the long run if their government forbids euthanasia on them and forces them to either hold their suicidal urges in, or to be subjected to oppressive forces preventing their suicide again and again.
OSTRACISM AND DISENFRANCHISEMENT
Many individuals who wish to be euthanized are individuals with serious symptoms of mental illness who, in many cases, are ostracized and disenfranchised by the people around them because of the strong way in which they many manifest these symptoms. Often times, friends and family who take it upon themselves to be “caring” guides or supporters of those who are suicidal towards recovery end up losing the edge to do so because they cannot cope with the symptoms of mental illness of the person they once wanted to support, thus deciding that they can no longer help the suicidal individual, abandoning them, and leaving the individual with mental illness to struggle on their own (while maybe giving them a phone number to call or the information of an agency to go to for help), and this is yet another instance where we see the warm and fuzzy messages in the spirit of “you are not alone,” “I care about you,” and “you are loved,” from suicide preventing advocates (including friends or relatives) completely dissipating into thin air, changing into messages conveying that the abandoned individuals are indeed alone, and that they are not loved, tolerated, or even cared about anymore.
Consequences of Ostracism and Disenfranchisement
Such instances of ostracism and disenfranchisement increase the suicidal thought of the disenfranchised suicidal individuals by inducing three notorious triggers: depression from being abandoned, guilt from having done something to cause the abandonment, and anger and mistrust in society at large. In this case scenario, suicide seems the more logical option for the abandoned suicidal so that they no longer have to deal with a world that has turned its back on them. This is particularly problematic for those with refractory mental illness because even getting help for their illness from an agency can still fail to be enough to bring about relief to a point where they don’t have to be at the mercy of other individuals outside of the doctor’s office whose ability to be the least supportive of them is either limited or nonexistent. Therefore, it is very common for those with refractory mental illness to see people who once wanted to be on their side completely turn away in a time of dire need of support, and this is by far one of the most devastating experiences that those with mental illness in general can go through. This is therefore another situation where suicide prevention falls flat and the suicidal urges of an abandoned individual increase rather than decrease.
SOCIETY’S NONRECIPROCAL DEMANDS ON THE SUICIDAL
The irony in situations where the suicidal are abandoned is the way in which the friends and family who abandoned them would react when the suicidal person begins to talk about intending to commit suicide: the friends and family would be sad, or angry, begging or demanding that the suicidal person not commit suicide; or what about an instance where an suicidal person actually puts a gun to their head and tell the people who once turned their back on them that they will commit suicide? The people who would have abandoned the suicidal individual would then become extremely submissive, frantically giving in to the suicidal person’s demands, in fear that they might commit suicide. This contradictory phenomenon, combined with the brutality that the suicidal are subjected to by suicide-preventing public forces, raises a series of important questions: Why do friends, family, peers, or the people who at one point treat a suicidal individual as though they do not owe them the support they once offered also expect to be entitled to the person they abandoned remaining alive and not committing suicide? Why do the very people who disenfranchise and abandon a suicidal person in need of their support also poke and nab at that that person so they will still remain alive? Why do government forces in countries around the world act as though the suicidal owe them to remain alive, even if it is against their will? What code of ethics dictates that the suicidal are not owed emotional support, supportive friendships, sociocultural privileges, etc. but they are owed brutal interventions from government forces and public powers that push the mentally ill into services even if they do not request them, do not want them, or can’t afford them? Simply put:
Why does society at large bluntly dictate that it does not owe the mentally ill that it disenfranchises any kind of social privilege (like emotional support, relationships, work and other social privileges) and yet shamelessly demand that the mentally ill live, even against their will, as though the mentally ill, in turn, owe it to society to do so?
Or, in a more general sense:
If the world owes nothing to the mentally ill who wish to be euthanized, why does the world treat the mentally ill who wish to be euthanized as though they owe it to the world to live?
This heavily imbalanced societal phenomenon, which gives the mentally ill and suicidal the short end of the stick, proves that suicide prevention measures are not only not entirely rational, but they also fail to make the suicidal individual’s dignity, comfort, and enhancement of their sentient experience the #1 priorities in suicide prevention advances. Instead, we see here that the life preservation of the individual is the ultimate goal and the true #1 priority, and just about every other aspect of that individual is deemed as secondary in importance, if that.
THE MEDIOCRITY OF SUICIDE PREVENTION HOTLINES
Anyone who has contacted suicide prevention hotlines for a prolonged period of time knows that it takes a stroke of luck to be matched with an operator that will be the least helpful in a particular situation. It is no secret that suicide prevention hotline operators are not therapists and that they may or may not have any training in handling suicidal crises. Or they may have, in fact, gotten some training, but may choose to disregard it in a call altogether. An individual we will call Lucas, who has refractory mental illness, will tell us about his experience with having called multiple suicide hotlines:
“Sometimes I’ve gotten connected with operators who are helpful and supportive (who give me follow-up calls) but too often I’ve gotten connected with operators who are just ok conversationalists that mean to be encouraging but don’t necessarily say anything that helps me overcome the obstacle I may be facing. Sometimes I get connected with the very same of those individuals and wind up having yet another conversation with them that is no more helpful than the first phone call with them. And sometimes I get connected with people who are unhelpful and even rude. Once, I got connected to an asshole who said that “we don’t do that anymore” after I asked if I was talking to the suicide hotline. He gave me another number to call and, to the best of my memory, that number he gave me led nowhere. I also got connected to this older woman who was rude. The phone call began with her asking me right off the bat if I needed and ambulance, and when I told her that I didn’t, she asked me why I called in the first place if I didn’t need an ambulance. I told her something to the effect that I just needed to talk. She asked me what was going on, and from her seemingly rude demeanor I grew anxious and struggled to open up about what I was struggling with, and when the woman picked up on that she told me to just come right out and tell her what I was dealing with because she “didn’t want to play the guessing game.” If that had happened today, I would have just told her to go fuck herself and hung up the phone, but imagine how vulnerable I was at the time from being suicidal. So I just gave in, told her what was going on, and we just had a conversation about what I was dealing with from there. Overall that woman was very unpleasant. I remember her telling me that she had “favorite” grandsons that she would write a check to and not expect a dime back from, and other grandsons that she didn’t like at all whom she wouldn’t give the time of day. That woman was downright nasty in the way she talked at me- it's like she was ignoring the fact that I was suicidal that night. She would have been far better as an ambulance dispatcher than an actual suicide hotline operator."
Not only is it important to consider that the quality of service of suicide hotlines is below average, but it is also important to question how therapeutic it is to use them. How is it therapeutic to call a complete stranger to tell them about your problems? How therapeutic is it to call a hotline of complete strangers to talk about your problems, and to get a completely different complete stranger to talk to every time you call? All things considered, contacting a suicide hotline can be a gamble in itself.
CONCLUSION
Suicide prevention programs are very good about using the media to promote their cause with heart-warming messages of hope, healing, and love towards their community like they were lyrics coming out of a Barney the Dinosaur song. However, it is important to keep in mind that these advances have an agenda that does not necessarily intend to favor the suicidal individuals it aims to reach. They are an extension (or perhaps even a puppet) of a larger public force or government dictatorship that uses brute force on the mentally ill who wish to be euthanized if they refuse to act by their pro-life standards. Therefore, their “warm and fuzzy” advances are only an illusion that conceals the iron hand of an oppressive pro-life government force. Furthermore, the suicide preventing individuals who claim that they “love” and “care” or a suicidal person enough to “want to be there” for them cannot fully be trusted. In many cases, suicide prevention advocates find over time that they cannot cope with the symptoms of mental illness of a suicidal person and prefer to selfishly turn them away to their own luck, making their suicide prevention cause and initiatives look like a more selfish than selfless pursuit. This is a commonplace reality that those who struggle with refractory mental illness have to face throughout their life. Therefore, they deserve the option to be euthanized at their request when following any advice they get from suicide prevention propaganda or even from Friend & Lover’s best-known song to “Reach Out in the Darkness” falls flat and they are left with no support and no way to fend for themselves.