[i_am_programmer]

It's disheartening so many don't see the brain as a physical part of ourselves, just the mental. To describe this individual as suffering from "crippling depression" but also "physically healthy" when they clearly suffer from long term mental health problems feels like an oxymoron.

I'm not sure for what reason people think everyone needs to be alive and live long natural lives. If she doesn't end her life humanely and in the comfort of trained professionals, she can just simply do it at home in a far more unpleasant way. Hope it all goes well for them.

[Wytwwww]

> If she doesn't end her life humanely and in the comfort of trained professionals, she can just simply do it at home in a far more unpleasant way

What's the difference? It's unavoidable that long term if assisted suicide is normalized (and even endorsed by the healthcare system) more people who wouldn't have chosen that option on their own will decide to kill themselves (or ask a doctor to do it).

How do you think a person suffering from a mental illness would be affected by their psychiatrist telling them that he can't help him anymore and that maybe they should consider killing themselves? A terminal cancer patient has no hope and is doomed to die regardless of anything else. That's not the case if you suffering from a severe mental health issue: - there are many other treatment options that they didn't try (because they couldn't afford to, are not available in their home country, they aren't aware of them etc. etc.) - a definitive diagnosis is impossible, psychiatrists are not oncologists and due to the nature of the field only have a very vague understanding of what they are even doing.

I'm certainly not judging the person who chose this path (even if they weren't indirectly forced into it by other people and had no other options, even if I find it hard to believe that could be the case very often) but from the perspective of the state/society/healthcare system this creates some very perverse incentives. The cost difference between investing large amounts of money into new advances/expensive (possibly not even financially but politically) treatments and using euthanasia as a way to solve the same problem (just way more effectively) is pretty big.

[raydev]

> How do you think a person suffering from a mental illness would be affected by their psychiatrist telling them that he can't help him anymore and that maybe they should consider killing themselves

Is that happening as policy? Anyway, we can always add a rule not to do this.

[Wytwwww]

That's what the article implied. Of course, I would assume (hope) it would never be this explicit but if assisted suicide is normalized, I wouldn't be surprised that some people might be implicitly steered towards this option by (if the situation seems hopeless and all easily accessible/cheap treatments have been tried)

[sebazzz]

> What's the difference? It's unavoidable that long term if assisted suicide is normalized (and even endorsed by the healthcare system) more people who wouldn't have chosen that option on their own will decide to kill themselves (or ask a doctor to do it).

What does that matter? Aren’t we all supposed to be entitled to have that control over our own lives?

[Wytwwww]

Perhaps. But that seems like an illusion to me in this case. One can hardly consider people suffering from severe mental illnesses to be capable of making rational choices which would mean that their decisions would be influence significantly more by the environment and the people that surround them.