Suicide: An Ethical Delimna

[bennyboy]

Yes, that's what I mean by usual caveats, if you have reason to believe someone is not in their normal state of mind, there's a good argument for preventing them to kill themselves. That is an exception. But otherwise, short of committing anyone you suspect is suicidal, I don't know what practical steps you can take. If there's no signs, there's no action to take.
[. . .]
What I would have a problem with is then forcing them to live under suicide watch indefinitely because they are "not allowed" to make that choice.

I would argue that the desire to kill oneself is in itself sufficient to show that a person is not functioning normally mentally-- unless there are mitigating circumstances like a terminal cancer or the tragic loss of one's entire family (town buried in a mudslide etc.), or even some long-pondered philosophical position. And you're right-- all those instutions do exist, and that's because suicide potentially affects everybody and experts are working hard to develop ways of dealing with it.

I agree that it's unethical to permanently stunt someone's liberty (psych-ward-imposed meds for life, for example) to prevent a suicide-- as Losty said, that's maybe more unethical than the suicide itself. After all, what's the point of taking away all the liberties and pleasures of life in order to keep that life going? At some point, you're going to have to let the person go and accept some of the burden of guilt if they go through with it.

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It's "dilemma," not "delimna."

Yeah, and this after we even had a whole thread about the importance of checking spelling and meaning in new thread titles. Bad spelling in thread titles is heavily unethical, and I cannot support it!