Suicide victim allowed to die
In the UK, a woman suffering from depression used a living will to aid in her suicide. She drank a bottle of poison, called the ambulance and handed them her living will. It prevented them from employing life-saving measures, but allowed them to keep her comfortable until she died. The woman had attempted suicide several times before and had always been saved by medical professionals, but because of her legal end-of-life directive, doctors felt they could not intervene.
I am not at all a proponent of prolonging life by any means necessary and have always been in favor of living wills, but it seems that something went terribly wrong here. A young woman who wants to end her life calls for help so that she will not die alone and in pain, and her wishes are honored? The fact that she called for help wasn't a cue for the medical professionals to step in and save her? Did it not occur to anyone that, had she really wanted to be successful, she could have employed a number of other options that did not involve medical assistance?
People who battle severe, chronic depression live in a terrible place, but surely we can do better by them than merely helping them to die more comfortably.
How to Put Your Gifts Out There
1 year ago
As someone who has suffered from depression before I can say with confidence that we can surely do better than just helping people die more comfortably. Something surely went terribly wrong in the case of this woman, but it wasn't the end that disturbs me. It's that something had been terribly going wrong obviously for a long time and yet some how this woman didn't find enough help, community, or God to change her story from a statistic to life. Somewhere within this tragic story I sense there is an even more tragic tail about the death of community. Anyone out there...way out on a limb...please ask for help and not help to die. LIfe can be better.
ReplyDelete