Suicide: An Ethical Delimna

[bennyboy]

I grant that you can't educate someone back to sanity, but not all suicides are a result of mental illness (in the clinical sense).

Yeah, it's almost impossible to draw clear guidelines on whether someone has the capacity to make a decision of that import. Especially in the elderly, there are confounding factors that sometimes get ignored. For example, mood swings can be a side effect of non-psych drugs. It's possible that Gramps is depressed the Grammy died, feels his life has run its course, and wants to leave gracefully, before he's nothing but a bag of bones. It's also very possible, however, that some of the more than 10 different meds he's probably taking are interacting in unfortunate ways; a simple prescription change might give him a little more time to enjoy his grandkids or to complain about his no-good son-in-law.

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Another thing I think we haven't talked about is the method of suicide. Not every suicide has to be by a shotgun in the mouth, or by a bottle of downers and a quarter of Jack Daniels. I think those methods are kind of a "fuck you" to the survivors.

I think the ethics of suicide really is about the effect on others-- it always sucks to lose a loved one, but that could be balanced by the inspiration of an old geezer choosing to go out with a bang, perhaps? What about arranging to have a hang-gliding accident, or dying while climbing Everest or something? Or why not go to Africa and save a few kids until you inevitably catch Ebola?

Without regard to the actual act of suicide, I'm pretty sure it's unethical to do it in a way that you know will bring harm to others: "Nobody cares about me-- well, maybe they'll care if they have to clean my brains off their precious Norwegian hand-printed wallpaper." That's a dick move, that.