THE UNITED STATES, FREEDOM, AND THE "RIGHT" TO LIFE

No people on earth boast about their country’s “freedom” as do Americans. It is not uncommon for many American patriots to exalt their country with an air of national pride as they chest-thump over civil liberties that their country has which others around the world lack, such as the freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom to criticize the government, among others. Other Americans like to support their portrayal of the United States as a “free country” by referencing the Declaration of Independence’s well-known claim:

         “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.”

Also, many people in American soil use the expression, “it’s a free country” when they agree to disagree with someone else’s actions, typically in response to actions that they deem to be odd, a bit startling, or unwise. A girl at a mall who sees one of her friends getting ready to spend her whole paycheck on fancy clothes in a single department store might say, “well, it’s a free country! She’s allowed to drain her earnings like that!” Likewise, a man who sees his friend at a bar drinking alcohol to stupor, gleefully mingling with other bar customers with incoherent speech, and languishing on the streets from severe intoxication may look at his drunk friend and also dismiss his actions by thinking to himself, “Well, It’s a free country! He’s allowed to get wasted like that!” When it comes down to it, however, how free is the United States truly? In what instances do we see that the United States is not the “free” or “glorious” nation that many American patriots portray it to be? Sadly, there is no shortage of examples, as listed below.

Racial Profiling

In the United States (as in many other parts of the world, sadly) being of color is a major factor that often strips someone from the freedom that the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution promise all its citizens, and the rates of police brutality against people of color is one of the most striking example of this sad phenomenon. According to statista.com, from 2015 to May 2021, the rate of fatal police shootings against Black people stood at 36 per million, which is more than twice the amount of police shootings against white people in the same time-span. Also, an article from nyu.edu states that black people are 20% more likely to be stopped by policemen and are searched 1.5 to twice as often as white drivers. How can people of color feel “free” in a country where they will be inconveniently disturbed by the police when they’re driving solely for being of color? How can they live a life of “freedom” in a country where the police (the people whose duty is to keep citizens safe) have little to no regard for their safety in the first place? How can the children of parents of color live a free and happy childhood in a country where they have to live in fear that one of their parents  (or even the child themselves) might get shot one day, just for being of color? How can people of color feel “free” in a country whose system of racial bias push them into issues like crime, poverty, and imprisonment?

Oppression Against the LGBTQ+ Community

People from the LGBTQ community, particularly transgender individuals, are often victims of fatal hate crimes in the United States every year, as well as targets of backlash just for being transgender or gender non-conforming. Many transwomen are murdered in the United States every year, and it is no wonder that a Day of Remembrance, November 20th, was established to memorialize those who have been murdered because of transphobia. According to the Human Rights Campaign, more than 200 deaths of transgender people have been recorded by the HRC since 2013, and their records indicate that the death toll stood at 37 in November of 2020-the highest number of murders per year since 2013. The Human Rights Campaign attributes these murders to a variety of factors, including anti-trans stigma that stems from lack of support from the government, lack of family acceptance, and cultural marginalization and invisibility. The HRC also mentions denial of opportunity (and thus, privilege) in society, such as denial of access to healthcare, employment discrimination, and unequal policing. Homelessness and physical/mental health disparities are very common problems that transgender people endure, and they are the direct result of the aforementioned contributing factors. How can these transwomen feel “free” in a country where coming out as their preferred gender alone feels like an imminent danger to their lives? How can they feel “free” in a country so saturated with transphobia that they are pushed into the periphery of society, becoming prone to problems with mental illness, unemployment, and homelessness?

Profiling in Action

The story of a woman we will call Jessica illustrates how sly the United States and it’s organs can be in their profiling practices, treating incidences of espionage and stalking as actions of “safeguarding” Jessica recalls:

“I remember back in the day, when I had recently moved to DC, I made a trip to the Dunn Loring station in nearby Northern Virginia. That was my first or second trip to Virginia on the metro, and I was impressed by the beautiful landscapes that I saw in all of Northern Virginia while riding the metro, so I thought to myself, why not film the landscapes I see in my rides and share it with the world? That same day, before leaving the Dunn Loring station, I saw a nasty white woman with red hair giving me a dirty look. That’s one of the very few times I got that kind of look in the DMV region. I had just come from the Midwest, however, where I got those kind of looks every so often for being part of the LGBTQ community, so I was used to that at the time and shook it off. Anyways, the train came, I got in, and I started filming the landscapes I saw while riding the train. Little did I know, however, that I was being photographed and spied on while I did this because, a few days later, detectives from the metro came to my house, stating that a “suspicious person” lives in it. I didn’t know what they were talking about and I had nothing to hide, so I let them in my house, and they just started interrogating me. They even showed me a photograph that some asshole took of me doing my filming, and told me that the person who took the photograph, who worked for some branch of the military, thought I “looked” like the type of people they work against, and I’m not sure if it is because I’m noticeably from the LGBTQ community, or if it is from my olive skin tone. Who knows? The cops also told me that the stalker found me suspicious because “I was carrying a map,” while all I was using was google maps like every other damn fucking clueless tourist in a city full of tourists like DC would. The pigs mentioned that I was spotted at the Dunn Loring station, the same station I got the dirty look from the old white bitch, so I suspect that she may have been behind this. In the end the cops took down my information and left. Boy, do I feel violated- all because I was filming the landscape of a city I had just discovered, just like a tourist would. Those asshole pigs might as well knock on Nick Johnson’s door for doing what he does for his Youtube channel. Oh, wait! He’s white, thought, so he’s allowed to do whatever the fuck he wants to do in this stupid country without the pigs meddling in his business.

I swear, the next time this happens to me, I will file a lawsuit against whichever people or entities are behind this.”

The fact that branches of the United States Military endorse such practices highlights how much more the United States as a whole favors asserting a controlling hand on the people in its soil rather than extending the freedoms that it promises for them in its well-known historical documents. Needless to say, any nation that spies on, interrogates, and profiles tourists who document landscapes and vistas that it’s own capital boasts is not, in any conceivable way, “The Land of the Free.”

Idiotic Law Practices in the United States

There are also some less extreme (but nonetheless pathetic and ridiculous) examples of the United States’ oppressiveness. One of them is the United States’ banning of Kinder Surprise eggs (not to be confused with Kinder Joy eggs) over potential choking hazards. Anyone caught smuggling these eggs into the United States by authorities can be fined $2,500 per egg, as if the Shopkins and Squinkies (which are perfectly legal in the United States) that children in the country play with on a regular basis didn’t pose the exact same choking hazard that the country so frantically tries to avoid with it’s ban on Kinder Surprise eggs. The United States thus becomes a country where kids and toy collectors alike do not have the freedom to enjoy the surprise toys inside the egg chocolates of one of the most famous and respected brands in the world, which most countries in the rest of the world do allow its citizens to enjoy without any restrictions whatsoever. Who would have thought that the government of “The Land of the Free” could be so oppressive that it will severely tax anyone in its soil who is spotted “smuggling” harmless chocolate eggs containing smiley assembly figures of Fred Flintstone holding a dinosaur grass mower, or another of Cindy Bear holding a magnifying glass with a butterfly sitting on top of it, or another of a Smurf holding a godforsaken watering can? The United States is both an embarrassment and a laughing stock to the world when it comes to its pathetic protocols on Kinder Surprise eggs. This is a ridiculous example of high-tier oppression that is hardly seen anywhere else in the world. 

The United States also has major restrictions when it comes to the pursuit of sex, especially for involuntary celibates, or incels. Soliciting a prostitute is illegal in the United States, as if legalizing the exchange of money for safe sex with a consenting adult man or woman, under no coercion, in a safe and private setting, meant the fall of civilization. If one takes into account that engaging in, and soliciting, prostitution is illegal in the United States, but the making and broadcasting of pornography and sexual innuendos in American media is not, one sees a shameless and hypocritical double standard in American society which puts incels in the United States at a great disadvantage by narrowing their "freedom" down to merely being allowed to derive fantasies from porn or references to sex from TV shows to stimulate their libido, and to use them as a vehicle to reach orgasm on their own. This endeavor is limiting at best and unfulfilling at worst, and it is therefore a major cause of sexual frustration for many incels in the United States. Much to their dismay, they are not free to pay someone to partner up with to make those fantasies a reality without getting arrested in the United States, nor are they free to even talk about those fantasies or their sexual frustration without facing ostracism in American society as well as backlash, especially from the traditionalist, anti-prostitution prudes, activists, and zealots that abound in the country. The end result of this social dynamic becomes a tediously prudish American society that imposes far more restrictions than it allows freedoms when it comes to incels’ pursuit of sex. Law enforcement in the United States even goes as far as to waste time setting up sting operations to arrest and disgrace adults who make advances to pay for sex with another adult rather than investing the time and resources they waste in those unnecessary operations to fight real crime. To say the least, American society can be frustratingly tedious, prudish, oppressive, and disempowering to live in for incels, and it is likely that many of them are incels to begin with because they are socially marginalized by the vast majority of crowds in said society for reasons that don't necessarily have anything to do with their sexual ardor. This is yet another example of how freedom in the United States is very lacking and how it is in no way all-inclusive. 

THE UNITED STATES' OPPRESSION OF THE MENTALLY ILL

The above examples of nationwide oppression and restriction given above should be more than enough to dispel any notion in people's minds that the United States is a “free” country like the country’s patriots want everybody else to believe. But there is yet another arena in which the United States clasps its oppressive hands, and that is the mental health community in its soil. The United States specifically oppresses those with mental illness who wish to be euthanized, and it does so in three major ways:

1) Oppressive Legislation

The United States oppresses the mentally ill who wish to be euthanized through a public policy power known as parens patriae, which allows government authorities to intervene in situations in which a child, person, or animal need protection from an adversary influence. In this case, because the United States deems those with refractory mental illness who wish to die as always being “incapable” of making informed decisions, not only does the United States deny them the option to be euthanized, but it denies mental health clinicians permission to euthanize their patients. Furthermore, the United States gives policemen and clinicians the authority to intervene at their discretion in situations where someone with mental illness expresses wishes to die. And because these measures are compulsory, doctors and clinicians can take liberties to suppress any and all potential risk for someone to willfully end their own life in ways that range from highly-taxing, to coercive, to downright brutal, regardless of the consequences that such pursuits can have on the target victims of these oppressive measures. Below are some examples of these abuses of power.

2) Compulsory Treatment on the Suicidal

Because of the paternalist pro-life dogma that directs parens patriae’s stance on the suicidal in the United States, clinicians in the country are required by law to subject a patient to inpatient hospitalization if that patient expresses death wishes. In these instances, the therapist will call an ambulance or the police to transport the patient to an emergency room, and all of this will be done whether or not the patient wishes to be treated, or whether or not they can afford it. Because the nature of this procedure is compulsory, the methods that are used to carry out this procedure often involve excessive restraint. A survivor of these abusive measures, whom we will call Jason, shares a striking example of this form of oppression and coercion:

“I once saw a student therapist at a Christian Theological Seminary that offers counseling services. The procedures of that facility where pretty strict from the get-go. First, the therapist wanted me to sign a promisory letter where she provided a signature agreeing to be fully in charge of my treatment, and where my family members were supposed to provide a signature stating that they would be involved in my care, despite the fact that I was 26 years old at the time, and not younger than 18! I was also supposed to sign that paper stating that I would agree to be involved in this. I can’t remember whether or not I signed that paper. What I do remember is that I told the student therapist about my suicidal thoughts and my wishes to poison myself so I could end the pain I had to put up with because of my mental illness. This concerned the student therapist, so she asked me to sign a “no suicide contract” which I thought was a bullshit protocol I didn’t believe in and that I wanted no part in. So, when I told her that I refuse to sign that bullshit document, the therapist called the police. I knew better than to bolt because, from previous experience, I knew that the pigs would be after me regardless and the assholes would hunt me down and catch me one way or the other. I also knew that the more I evaded the police, the more fiercely they would chase me down, so I thought it was better to give in and put up with the long-ass wait for the police to arrive in the therapist’s office while the director of the facility would chit-chat at me about bullshit that was supposed to keep me distracted. When the pigs arrived, I was handcuffed (Yes! Handcuffed!) for the police’s “own protection” they said, as if they were the ones that needed protection from me, and not the other way around. I did not even act violently towards the cops in the first place! Anyways, before the pigs took off with me, one of the staff of the counseling center gleefully “congratulated” me for my “courage in taking this step” as if I was letting myself get taken away because I had any choice in the matter. The cops then entrapped me in a barred police truck (Yes, the ones where they transport the people that get arrested) and took off to the emergency room. I remember how much anger and despair I felt when I was in that cage with wheels. It was darker inside of it than the night sky, and I was so worried about what was going to happen to me and about going to the inpatient unit that I didn’t want to be in nor that I could afford. All I had left to do was to close my eyes, lower my head and whisper to myself, “everything is going to be ok.” “Everything is going to be ok.” Once I arrived at the hospital, they released me from the super uncomfortable handcuffs, and they had me wear a patient gown and sit on a chair in a room that reclinable chairs attached to the walls. It was very uncomfortable to recline on those chairs, so I simply sat upright. And then I waited. And waited. And waited. And waited for hours until one of the hospital staff finally talked to me and asked me what was going on. I told her what had happened and told her that part of my problem was that I had no way to afford insurance, so I had to rely on a public agency for my care which didn’t have the best resources for me, including a therapist who worked on his computer for half of the session times he had with me because he was so overworked, from what he told me. I remember telling her specifically that I was scared being in a situation of so much restraint and was worried about what could happen to me at that point. The staff person asked me, “What do you want to happen?” I knew for sure what I didn’t want to happen, which was that I would be taken to an inpatient unit against my will,but I knew that if I even told the staff person just that, she would more than likely consider internalizing me, so I just told her that I “ just wanted to get better,” and finally something went my way. The staff person referred me to another public agency for counseling and psychiatry I had never been to in order to follow up, and they finally let me go. Unfortunately, days after, I came to find an envelope addressed to me at home, from that hospital, charging me FIVE HUNDRED PLUS DOLLARS for that uncomfortable, compulsory experience I didn’t request! And for the next few months that I couldn’t come up with the money, they just kept mailing me bills again and again until I had to pay the full amount (again, for an unwanted service) about year later.”

Jason’s story not only illustrates how the United States oppresses those who wish to be euthanized, but it downright treats them like criminals. What "free" country would endorse someone troubled by a mental illness to be handcuffed by the police and taken to a hospital behind the bars of a police truck (as if they had committed a crime) in a time of severe vulnerability, rather than taking the more sensible approach to have that person taken to a hospital by an ambulance? Also, what "free" country would demand someone with a mental illness to receive a medical “service” by force, and charge that individual for having been subjected to this highly negative experience just to receive a service they did not request in the first place?! As if such coercion wasn’t enough, the so-called “Land of the Free” takes its brutality towards those who wish to be euthanized to an extreme, as illustrated below.

3) Coercive Intervention and Intrusion

The United States’ suicide prevention initiatives are radical at best, stripping away all rights from people with severe mental illness to take any steps to have their lives extinguished, yet expanding the rights to suicide preventing interventionists to accomplish their death-prevention tasks in whichever way they please just as long as these tasks are accomplished, with little regard to how the implementation of these tasks, and the specific ways that they are carried out, may impact their targets. Because these death prevention tasks prioritize life preservation much more than it does the enhancement of the sentient experience of a suicidal individual, they are sometimes carried out in the most coercive and brutal ways imaginable. Jason experienced oppression by suicide prevention agents to this extreme as he recalls below:

“Back in 2012, I was part of a mental health group on Facebook. I joined the group to make friends and to share my experiences with mental illness with other people who could relate. In that group, I met a member by the name of Valerie Scalera, who went by the pathetic nickname of “Valerina Valerie.” She joined our Facebook group to advocate for suicide prevention because her own mother committed suicide. At first, there seemed to be no issue between Scalera and the rest of the group. Her posts in the group seemed very genuine and that’s how she started to develop following in the group for a few days before she stormed out of the Facebook group over her clashing with other members on the issue of suicide prevention. Valerie Scalera had a bad habit of chest-thumping about the “superior” knowledge that she and her relatives had on the topic of debate and putting down other members when she disagreed with something they said. To my later regret, I ignored these warning signs of abuse and continued to trust Scalera until I learned the hard way the mistake I was making. After Scalera left the mental health group on Facebook, I continued to feel unstable to where I felt the urge to message Scalera, telling her about having some intent to seek help from someone to achieve death. She took my suicidal gestures to heart, and instead of genuinely helping to lead me out of the distressful situation I was in and teaching me ways to deal with it, she once again went psychotic on me and spun out of control. She forwarded my messages to many of her contacts and, when I snapped at her for sharing such a delicate, confidential matter to a bunch of complete strangers, she bashed me back! She and I had a back and forth argument where Scalera spouted all her reproaches on what she perceived as “faults” on my part for my "gesturing" while I pointed at her evident immaturity and incompetence as a “suicide prevention advocate” who did a shitty job at handling these issues. As Scalera’s rambling left no room for agreement, I blocked her on Facebook altogether. Unfortunately, my troubles only snowballed from there. A few days later, two nosey asshole cops showed up to work no less, in order to interrogate me about what was going on, as if this ordeal was any of their business to begin with. Like that wasn’t enough, my embarrassment from the situation rode home with me when my mother picked me up from work. She yelled at me because, apparently, an abusive swat team violently broke into my house with sirens yelling, while I was at work, like they were trying to do a drug bust. My mother later told me that there was yet another twist to the situation- Valerie Scalera inexplicably got a hold of a girl who was in one of my classes in high school (whom I only talked to once or twice six years after graduating from that high school) to tell her about our ordeal, and she ended up having an argument with that girl just like she had several times with the other members of the Facebook group we met at, and with myself. And what makes the situation more shocking is that I already had the cops called on me two other crises- once by a suicide hotline, and another by a mental health agency who (unlike Valerie Scalera) actually knew how to handle suicide crises, and in those instances the swat teams involved just drove to my house quietly, knocked on the door, and talked to me. The cops never came to my house so violently as they did when Valerie Scalera was involved, so she must have gone so ballistic when she ratted me that she caused more alarm than was necessary. 

It’s been 9 years since that incident happened, and I still couldn’t be more resentful of that abusive intervention. The only thing it accomplished was to turn me against the mental health system in America and suicide prevention programs and initiatives here. I witnessed their ugly side firsthand, and now I’m doing my part to help bring that whole system down.”

The End Result of the Work of Oppressors Disguised as "Good Samaritans"

In light of this form of brutality from the United States’ public powers, some striking phenomena about suicide prevention come to light. The most striking observation is that Jason was violated in an ordeal where he was emotionally vulnerable and where Valerie Scalera and the intrusive authorities were the aggressors. Valerie Scalera bashed Jason, blamed Jason for her confrontation with him, and created uproar that alarmed many people. The swat team, on the other hand, sought Jason out like they were chasing after a criminal, invading his privacy in a bullish manner that cause emotional distress on him. Furthermore, it is very strange that Valerie Scalera, the intrusive swat team, and the meddling cops that violated his privacy acted in the guise of "Good Samaritans" who wanted the best for Jason despite having treated him in a bullish manner altogether. This speaks volumes about Valerie Scalera's, the swat team's, and the meddling cops' priorities, in which the enhancement of Jason's sentient experience was not priority #1.

Accountability Issues

A second observation worth nothing is that the police had no problem rushing to break into Jason's house or seek him out at work out of worry that he was in a state of incapacity to function well mentally, but they never thought to do the same thing with Valerie Scalera. Considering the fact that Valerie Scalera was bashing  when he was suicidal (instead of actually helping him), and recalling Scalera’s numrous arguments with people over the topic of suicide prevention makes it reasonable to assume that Scalera does not, in fact, advocate for suicide prevention with the right state of mind, or for the right reasons. In such instances, we can infer that Scalera goes through a phase of transference, projecting the very anger that she feels towards her mother for committing suicide, and towards herself for failing to prevent this, onto other people whom she relates to this struggle. And if one considers how violently law enforcement showed up at Jason’s house when Scalera was involved in their intervention vs. the numerous other times when she wasn’t, one can infer that Scalera abused community resources to excess to relieve her frustrations, rather than to alleviate Jason’s struggles. Why did this not alarm the authorities? Also, why did they not break into Scalera's house to teach her a lesson on proper ways of dealing with someone who is suicidal in the same way that they did to Jason over his “gesturing”? How did it not concern the authorities that Valerie Scalera’s clarity of thought was being clouded by her own biases, traumas, and emotional dysregulation when she acted so irrationally in this ordeal? Another striking observation of United States’ police brutality on the suicidal answers these questions: The United States does not care how a person in its soil (whether it be swat teams or non-authorities) prevents the suicide of another, under what state of mind they do this, what their true motives are, or what repercussions this has on the targeted suicidal individual. The United States only cares about death being prevented, regardless of any consequences that the target person may endure as a result of this pursuit on them. 

The Damage Caused by Coercive Intervention

A third observation on the anti-death, pro-life advances of the parens patriae public power of the United States is that they are in no way therapeutic. They are abusive. They have the potential to traumatize their victims and have great potential to increase their suicidal thoughts, rather than reduce them. Jason is no exception, as he describes below:

"I've never felt so violated and abused by a group of people or by a government agency. After this whole thing happened, I was left feeling more depressed, unstable, and suicidal. I felt traumatized by what happened. My world was shaken upside-down and sideways as I came to realize that the suicide preventing agents that are treated with such high regard in our society, in reality, are a bunch of assholes who could be brutally abusive to someone just for the purpose of keeping them alive. It was scary, and angering at the same time, to realize that these suicide preventing assholes care more about my life being intact than my dignity, privacy, and sense of comfort being respected.

There is nothing honorable or respectable about the doings of Valerie Scalera on Jason, the swat team to broke into Jason's house, or the meddling policemen who sought him at work. Everything that those callous brutes did to Jason resembles more care for a life-preservationist agenda than Jason's dignity, privacy, and comfort. The doings of these three entities are more alike to those of abusive vandals, savages, and wild animals acting on impulse and an inclination to serve their own interests rather than Jason's. Their condemnable actions are a blatant form of abuse which, not surprisingly, only managed to traumatize Jason and to increase his suicidal ideation.

CONCLUSION

The modus operandi of the United States, when dealing with someone who expresses wishes or intent to end their life, is to preserve their life at all cost (even if it comes to a heavy cost to the targeted person), thus becoming a regime of imposition of life on people that allows for no freedom of choice in this matter, suppressing all opposition by the use of force like any other dictatorship. Therefore, the “unalienable right to life” that the Declaration of Independence mentions, in the United States, is not a right. It is an obligation. Everyone in US soil is expected and demanded by the United States government to live until they die of causes outside of their control, and anyone with mental illness who opposes to this expectation puts themselves at risk of being crushed down by the oppressive power of parens patriae.

Contrary to popular belief, the United States is not a free country. It is a very oppressive nation- one in which, among other things, the mentally ill are denied the right to choose the timing of their own death; it is a land of coercion which uses excessive restraint and oppression on many people, including those who even mention any pursuit of the ending of their life. Songs that celebrate the “freedom” that people supposedly enjoy in the United States, like James Brown's Living In America, are shallow and devoid of truth like corny commercials advertising a notoriously bad product, embellishing features that are defective or nonexistent in the product altogether. People outside of the United States who are drawn to the country by such false advertising schemes to “take a bite” out of it’s so called “freedom” will more than likely be disappointed. They will choke the United States' hard-to-bite oppressive measures, and they will find its insipid restrictions rather hard to swallow.  

The burning of a flag that, to many, represents a country of endless oppression and restriction.

Sources:

https://www.nyu.edu/about/news-publications/news/2020/may/black-drivers-more-likely-to-be-stopped-by-police.html

https://www.statista.com/statistics/1123070/police-shootings-rate-ethnicity-us/

https://www.hrc.org/press-releases/marking-the-deadliest-year-on-record-hrc-releases-report-on-violence-against-transgender-and-gender-non-conforming-people

https://assets2.hrc.org/files/assets/resources/2018AntiTransViolenceReportSHORTENED.pdf?_ga=2.90258266.151781695.1629084091-493737417.1629084091

DISABLING FACTORS AND LIMITED CONTROL

Those with refractory mental illness who wish to put an end to their lives through euthanasia are usually troubled by how limiting their lives become with the burden of their mental illnesses, and how difficult it thus becomes to move forward with their lives in such a way that it is reasonably worth living. These individuals are often troubled by the many disabling factors that often come with living with mental illness, most of which are outside of their control and hinder their ability to advance through life smoothly. The following is a list of some of the most common of such factors, and they are either internal or external:

Internal Factors

l Mood Disturbances: Those with refractory mental illness are usually afflicted by strong, uncomfortable emotions. In their particular case, these uncomfortable, painful emotions are hardly manageable even with the most current treatment methods at their disposal, and have persevered for unreasonable long periods of time. These refractory emotions become a form of chronic pain that the chronic sufferers must endure on a regular bases, almost constantly stalling growth in their other dimensions of wellness and making their sentient experience become significantly less bearable.

l Unpleasant Medication Sideffects: As if the torment of having a mental illness wasn’t bad enough, many of the pharmaceuticals available come with sideffects that cause a host of additional issues, such as weight gain, a foggy brain, uncomfortable brain sensations, vomiting, severe sedation, fainting, among others. Many individuals with refractory mental illness have to deal with the tough task of living with unpleasant medication sideffects just to see a glimpse of relief from the disabling symptoms of their mental illnesses.         

l  Emotional Dysregulation: many individuals with refractory mental illness who are victims of trauma often struggle to regulate their temper so that they can live in harmony with everyone around them. Many such individuals know better than to lash out or otherwise act in ways that can be perceived as hostile to others, yet they cannot control their outbursts as much as they wish they could. This, in turn, causes the further-hindering phenomenon of social thinning.

External Factors

l Social Thinning and Stigma: Many with refractory mental illness have either been stigmatized for having the serious mental health struggles that consume them, or have been blacklisted, deserted, and blocked out of the life of a person or group of people because of their persistent difficulty in coping with the symptoms of their mental illnesses, thus creating feelings of guilt on the mentally ill individual, and thus increasing their agony and suicidal urges.

l Punishment: Those with refractory mental illness who struggle with Emotional Dysregulation often find themselves losing control over their temper and violating codes of ethics in a wide variety of arenas, often finding themselves facing sanctions, reprimand, or arrest for their actions.

l Occupational Dysfunction: Many individuals with refractory mental illness face a persistent struggle to function at the very minimum in order to achieve important tasks such as learning for academic success, or working with efficacy to succeed in a job position. It is no wonder that there are many individuals with mental illness who live on the streets, unable to care for themselves. It is also quite common for those with refractory mental illness to be hardly capable of completing a degree and/or sustaining a reputable job, often times settling for lower-income type jobs and facing chronic financial concerns.

l Lack of Access to Resources: For many individuals with refractory mental illness, getting to see a therapist or access to medications are not affordable options due to money concerns or a lack of insurance, which can be rather difficult to get in some jurisdictions. It is quite common for providers to refuse to take insurance and to charge exorbitant fees per one session, as can be seen in the provider directory of websites like www.psychologytoday.com. Also, for those with refractory mental illness who need more specialized care, such as ECT or therapy geared toward healing trauma, such options may be either unaffordable (for the reasons mentioned earlier) or unavailable- it is not uncommon for facilities that provide these services to be at capacity and unable to take in new patients.  

The list of disabling factors goes on. However, as different and as diverse as these factors may be, they all involve one serious predicament in common- in the vast majority of cases, they are outside of the control of the mentally ill who endure them. Since those with refractory mental illness are subject to these disabling factors on a regular basis because of their recurrent struggle to cope with their mental illnesses, the level of control that they have over their life’s path declines significantly, while their level of suffering soars. Therefore, it holds that the less control you have over your mind and body, the less control you have over your life, and it is this lack of control over mental illness and its outcomes which snowball into a mixture of disabling factors that altogether crush those with refractory mental illness like an avalanche. It is no wonder, then, that a self-directed death would become a tempting option for them as it would allow what little control they have in the outcome of their lives. Euthanasia= total control over the continuing or not of a life in which they have little or no control over the disabling factors that consume their whole being, including the mental illnesses that heavily contribute to many of those factors. An oppressive, abusive government would not only deny the mentally ill such control, but would also manipulate the mentally ill in thinking they “lack the clarity of thought” to make the choice to end their lives. It doesn’t take “clarity of thought” for someone to know that they are in pain and that nothing at their disposal has proven effective to reduce that pain enough to allow for a life worth living.

It’s time to give those with refractory mental illness control over their lives, including the choice of whether or not they will continue living it. No government or entity has the legal or ethical right to strip those with refractory mental illness of the right to choose to cease to live if they do not wish to do so. Not only are such governments or entities oppressive when they deny those rights, but they are yet another major disabling factor that those with refractory mental illness must contend with- one that  strips them of their freedom to end their pain through death (thus perpetuating their misery), and downgrades and discredits their ability to make the best possible decisions about their dire and complex situation. No such entity could ever be considered “supportive” of those with refractory mental illness.      

DISCLAIMER

The main intent of this blog is to expose the experience of living with refractory mental illness from the angle of a fraction of the mental health resource consumer population which wishes to see Dr. Assisted Suicide (Euthanasia) become a legal means of ending the emotional instability and psycho-social turmoil that comes as a result of living with recurrent mental illness. In this blog, we believe that Dr. Assisted Suicide for the Mentally Ill should be legalized in the US and abroad, and that the mentally ill should be granted the legal right to choose between living despite the severe challenges they face, or ending a life of torment to which they may wish to die. We want to raise awareness of the suffering, oppression, and injustices endured by those in the faction of the consumer population which is dissatisfied with a life of remission they do not wish to live, and which they live by regulatory force and oppression from mental health facilities, law enforcement, and government legislators in many parts of the world. 

This blog is not intended to be used as a channel to engage in illegal activity of any kind. This blog is not designed to give advice in handling suicide methods and affairs, nor in encouraging suicidal subjects to end their life on their own efforts or through illegal means. All mental health or other safety concerns are always encouraged to be brought forth to a certified mental health institution. This blog is solely intended to bring awareness to the issues mentioned above, and to help anti-euthanasia policymakers and activists understand that suicide prevention programs and measures which are provided by force, and not consent, are unfair measures of oppression and stranglehold whose coercive nature can not only traumatize their target patients, but may often times fail to perform any lasting, helpful, and therapeutic function in the long run.

In order to maintain the legal standing of this blog as a channel of opinion in support of the Legalization of Assisted Suicide for the Mentally Ill, all messages or posts soliciting the above or other illegal activity will be deleted.

I, the creator of this blog, am not responsible for any choices that its readers make, legal or not, as a result of reading the content of this blog. Everyone who reads this blog, or writes for it, acknowledges this disclaimer to its entirety.  

EUTHANASIA SUPPORTERS VS. OPPONENTS: CAUSES OF THEIR DIVIDE

It is quite paradoxical that the two large groups of people above, despite being sharply divided on this debate, may share almost exactly the same life experiences, teachings, influences, upbringings, etc. In other words, they may differ in views on this topic while still sharing very much in common. Two adoptive siblings, for example, may be unfortunate to suffer deeply traumatic abuses from parents or caregivers in their childhood, developing recurrent psychiatric disorders and traumas that severely impair their learning abilities in their schooling, and their labor skills in the workforce. Still, it is possible for both adoptive siblings to grow into adulthood being completely divided on this issue despite sharing very similar struggles- while one of the siblings, despite the suffering that he or she may have endured in their own life, may still become inclined to advocate for the preservation of the lives of those with refractory mentally illness at all cost, the other sibling may have a much more antinatalist stance on the issue that he or she derives for their own traumatic experiences. On the other side of the coin, it is just as possible for two biological siblings who have come from a much more nurturing family in childhood that has enabled them to succeed in their educational and career pursuits, to be divided on the issue.

What is it, then, that causes this sharp divide? From the examples above, it is construable that life experiences alone aren’t necessarily guides for a person to favor one view or the other. Rather, there are three known factors that influence both inclinations.

DIFFERENCES IN COPING THRESHOLDS

Differences in coping threshold, or resilience, is a key factor that polarizes those who oppose Euthanasia for the mentally ill from those who support it. In many cases, opponents of Euthanasia for the mentally ill tend to be much more resilient individuals than many of their euthanasia-supporting counterparts in this debate, which helps explain their lesser regard for the suffering of the severely mentally ill who wish to be euthanized. Consequently, anti-euthanasia advocates often see the predicaments of suicidal individuals in the context of their more resilient experience, rather than that of the level of pain and suffering that a suicidal individual may be suffering, and therefore fail to take that into account when imposing their anti-euthanasia agenda on the mentally ill who wish to be euthanized. This leads them to make the misguided assumption that, because they have managed to cope with the challenges of living with mental illness, that everyone else who lives with mental illness 'should' and 'must' do the same. 

DIFFERENCES IN BELIEF SYSTEMS

The field of psychology teaches us that it is our perception, beliefs, or ideas towards any event, person, or idea (rather than the event, person, or idea themselves) what directly inspire the behaviors with which we react to those things. This phenomenon is especially true in this debate as a wide variety of beliefs direct our leanings on this highly controversial issue. The following is a list of some of these beliefs.

Mental Health System-Imposed Dogma

The mental health system in the United States, for example, is directly responsible for orchestrating a nationwide, anti-euthanasia regime which draws on suicide prevention initiatives, anti-euthanasia laws, and opposition to euthanasia for the mentally ill from the general public, to instill in people’s heads a very simple belief about the mentally ill who wish to die:

The mentally ill who wish to end their suffering through death are always in a state or condition of being incapable of adequate decision-making, and it is therefore always unethical to allow them to end their suffering through these means.

This fallacy is the key reason why clinicians and caregivers of a suicidal person often fail to take into consideration the amount of pain that a suicidal person with severe mental illness may be going through, for how long, or under what circumstances, when imposing their anti-suicide agenda on the suicidal individual. They mistakenly assume that the key issue that a suicidal person is facing is always a mere “lack of clarity of thought,” rather than a much more profoundly troubling factor like unbearable and recurrent emotional pain and circumstances outside of their control that exacerbate it. In other words, a circumstance where resilience is lacking, disabling factors are abounding, and protective factors are hardly within reach.

Beliefs About Life and Death

Differing perceptions of life’s worth and the consequences of Death often causes many to disperse in opinion on the question of whether or not the severely mentally ill should be granted the possibility of euthanasia. However, the vast majority of people involved in this debate generally fall under two categories: those to whom life is sacred and death is a curse (in other words, those who perceive Life as being better than death), and those to whom Life is an experience of recurrent torment and Death is an escape from it (that is, those who perceive Death as being better than Life).

· Belief That Life is Better Than Death

Through centuries, life has been venerated as a gift and a miracle in most civilizations. Life allows us to come to this world to see the good, live with the good, and enjoy the good in it. The liveliness of friends and loved ones who enrich our lives through their involvement with us adds to our enjoyment of the good in the world, and it is this general “good” that makes our lives on earth worthwhile and at the same time enjoyable. This element of general “goodness” that gives meaning to our lives is what drives many to faithfully believe that “Life is good.” Death, however, robs us of many of these things. It robs us of the opportunity to enjoy the good things that life has to offer when it takes our own life. Death also robs us of the joy we get from the friends and relatives that death takes from us. Death is not only an agent that replaces the people we love with painful voids in our hearts that we must wrestle by undergoing the stages of grief, but it even pushes us into a face-to-face encounter with a factor that most humans repel at all cost: the unknown. We don’t know what there is after life on earth (if anything at all), nor do we know where our deceased loved ones will be or where we will go after we die.

Many anti-euthanasia advocates oppose euthanasia for the severely mentally ill because they view life as something “good,” or even “sacred.” Therefore, the legalization of euthanasia for the mentally ill would mean, from their point of view, that the loved ones of those euthanized would be “worse off” unable to be around to enjoy the “good” in life, thus making the life preservation of those with severe mental illness of far greater importance than firstly ensuring whether or not a life worth living can be sustained by them or for them in the first place.

· Belief That Death is Better Than Life

Euthanasia supporters, on the other hand, see the above panorama with the exact opposite lenses. They are mostly concerned with the bad things about life that have made the lives of those with severe mental illness intolerable. Life, after all, makes us susceptible to suffering because of the human condition we are all born with. While some individuals are able to live in this world with ease of access to the good in life and to bring about more good from it to their own lives and the lives of others, other individuals aren’t so lucky. Many individuals with severe mental illness often lack the levels of resilience that are needed to cope with the pain and handicaps instilled by their illnesses to where any enjoyment of or access to the “good” things in life is either impossible or difficult to achieve without enormous amounts of pain and suffering in these processes. Mentally ill individuals who experiences a recurrent struggle to gain or maintain relationships, employment, independence, or a general sense of serenity and inner peace because of the marked difficulties they encounter in treating their own mental illnesses, and tolerating their distressful symptoms, are examples of this phenomenon. Their lack of resilience on these situations combined with the recurrent nature of their struggles thus makes the “bad” in life become the main theme of their existence. And it is here where death, rather than life, is good and more favorable. Death takes over the role of the rescuing element that kills the “bad,” pain-inducing elements that the more contemptible life brings into the table to make their sentient existence all the more painful. The end result of this dilemma, which the mentally ill are entrapped by, is their stronger preference for death to get rid of the “bad” in life that exacerbates their suffering over living for the “good” in life which they struggle to attain, maintain, or enjoy amid painful circumstances.

DIFFERENCES IN PRIORITIES AND VALUES

When evaluating the possible ways to eradicate the pain of the chronically mentally ill, those who oppose their euthanization have very different priorities from those who favor it. Both sides of this controversy value two different elements of the life of a chronically mentally ill individual, which puts them at odds.

Life Preservation

Those who oppose euthanasia in this debate value the life of the chronically mentally ill above all else, hence their focus on life preservation. From their perspective, neither the intensity nor the duration of the pain of a chronically mentally ill individual match in importance to their very life being intact under any and all circumstances because they believe that life alone, regardless of how burdensome it may be, has infinite value. They revere the aliveness of the individual as the most important of all aspects of that person’s being, and they believe that no amount of their suffering is reason enough to extinguish it, regardless of how intolerable, recurrent, or life-hindering it may be.

Pain Extinction

Those who favor euthanasia in this debate value much more than just the mere aliveness of the chronically mentally ill. They value the sentient experience and the coping ability / coping threshold of those with refractory mental illness, and the quality of life that follows from the combination of those factors. Euthanasia proponents hold the dignity and freedom of choice of the mentally ill at higher regard than their mere being alive, and rebuke the idea that those with refractory mental illness ever have to put up with illnesses that cause them recurrent suffering, and are hardly responsive to treatment, only because legislations force them to do so and because clinicians frown upon them choosing to be euthanized. Euthanasia supporters, unlike their counterparts, do not place value on the life of a person if they want to extinguish it to end intolerable pain. Pursuing the best sentient experience possible is a greater priority for them than life preservation.    

CONCLUSION

The key difference between anti-euthanasia, pro-life dogmatists and their counterparts in this debate is that the previous prioritize life preservation over pain eradication, while the latter value the wellness of the sentient experience of those with refractory mentally illness over their mere aliveness. A just society would allow people in each faction have the right to take part in their preferred side of this debate and to show advocacy for it. However, such a society ceases to be just when it favors and serves the mentally ill in one faction but not those on the other. A society that serves the mentally ill only by euthanizing them is an oppressive society- It serves the mentally ill who wish to be euthanized but leaves those who wish to continue living with no recourse to find healing from their illnesses. Likewise, a society that serves the mentally ill only by providing a variety of treatments is a negligent society- it serves the mentally ill who choose (and benefit from) the treatment available to them, but leaves those who do not respond to treatment without further recourse for eradication of their intolerable suffering. Unfortunately, most nations in the world (including the United States) currently fall under the latter category.