Today's NYTimes had an article that suicides are at an all time high as a percentage of the population. (see link below) Does this make any sort of case for euthanasia (or assisted suicide)? Or are they disconnected?

Are you seriously asking if we should consider offering assisted suicide as a “clean” solution to dire “economic conditions”?

Not in a substantial way. We had a couple commit suicide together in an assisted living facility here in my town a week or so ago. I don’t know if I’ve ever heard that before. Suicide is a problem all its own. Assisted suicide such as in Washington State is very specifically for terminally ill people of any age.

@ibstubro – what I am saying is that if a person has his heart set on killing himself, for whatever reason, then should there be an avenue for that person to pursue other than hanging himself in the garage or shooting himself in the living room?

I’m not recommending it, certainly. I’m saying that people want to kill themselves and will continue to want to do so, regardless of religion or anything else. My question is: for those people who are going to do the deed anyway, is there a better way to handle it, societally?

@ibstubro I think the answer is no. By doing so makes suicide acceptable in our society. It isn’t. We don’t want people to feel they have that option. Problems have solutions; suicide should not be considered one of them.

Should we not find the reasons this is happening at a higher rate and address those first? Personally I see all kinds of people suffering from anxiety and depression and have a suspicion that a good bit of it is caused by increasing environmental and situational factors. Most of this can be alleviated. Nobody can really stop someone who is hell bent on doing it so I can’t say I’m completely against some institutionalized form of it especially for health and suffering issues.

Well, @ibstubro, that’s certainly one way to reduce the unemployment levels and increase labor demand.~~

I find this question confusing. How would having assisted suicide lower the suicide rate?

In line with what @Seek said, I am reminded of this

@elbanditoroso I read somewhere that about 50% of self-inflicted gunshot deaths are suicides.
I don’t know the breakdown for the reasons someone chooses death: economic, health, loss of mate, etc…

It seems that someone has already come up with a lights-out solution. The US is losing people at the rate of 30,000 per year due to heroin/fentanyl overdoses. It is cheap. easy to get, it leaves a minimal mess and supposedly feels good on the way out.
I wonder how many of those deaths are suicides.

I realize the question is asked to stimulate conversation but @ibstubro gets right to the absurdity of the premise. It’s like looking at a flooding bathroom due to a broken pipe and concluding that the remedy is to cut a hole in the floor to better drain the water. The “solution” ignores the reason for the flooding and assumes the broken pipe to be the norm. Come to think of it, the proposal is even worse than that in that it actually is searching for a way to flood the bathroom more effectively.

Assisted suicide is only acceptable for health reasons – namely lack of any kind of quality of life.

Otherwise, if we could get the person to ask for help, that help would come in the form of suicide prevention, not suicide assistance.
It’s like saying we could prevent murders by telling people we’d kill their rivals for them if they’d just ask nicely. (Avoid those messy outcomes.)

Fortunately you have not had to deal with the suicide of anyone close to you. I have and there is a crucial factor which you’re overlooking; namely, the snowball effect that it will have upon everyone connected to the person committing suicide.

Currently, there are only a few states and countries which have laws permitting assisted suicide for those with terminal medical situations and the criteria are stringent. The situation has to be absolutely hopeless before someone is granted this.

And, generally speaking, the family and loved ones are an integral part of the process and there is a peaceful resolution for all.

Do you honestly think that the family and loved ones of a severely depressed person (due to joblessness/financial straits or whatever) are going to accept suicide as the best solution for this person? Of course not.

We don’t need to make suicide easier for people as a way of dealing with non medical unfortunate life circumstances. We need to provide a better range of services, medical, financial, jobs etc. to deal with the situation so that the person no longer is in such a fog of despair that suicide looks attractive.

Making it easier for a person like this to suicide is only assuring that the suicide toll will continue to rise because the odds of everyone who was involved with the person also suiciding increase exponentially. By making it easier (and even providing the means) it just insures that instead of just one suicide, that number is now doubled, tripled of quadrupled from the ranks of those who loved this person.

That’s the legacy of suicide which often gets overlooked but ask any health care professional what happens with the future suicide risk percentages in those who were involved with the original one.

It’s not a pretty picture.

Yes.
Man has no say at being born.
He should at least have a say in his death.
What else is a man entitled to but his own life?