KuriGohan&Kamehameha
想死不能 - 想活不能
- Nov 23, 2020
- 1,802
It's great that some people find comfort from the current paradigms of mental healthcare/healthcare in general. For those who find existing methods of treatment helpful, I agree that they should continue to engage with services they deem beneficial.
However, not everyone will be helped by what exists currently, including modalities that may be considered novel or groundbreaking (I'm looking at you, psychedelics) . That is a harsh fact of life. We can't fix everything. There will always be diseases with no cure, and problems with no solution, as has been the case throughout human history. We can only play God to a certain degree.
Now, there seems to be two ways of coping with this. One of them is being open to the idea that the way "mental healthcare" is practiced needs to be reformed. The other is making euthanasia available to those in truly hopeless circumstances, where one ascertains beyond reasonable doubt, that life is simply not worth living for them anymore and there's nothing more that can be done about it.
These two options are not mutually exclusive. They can coexist as long as the vox populi is willing to admit that these changes are necessary for improving the quality of life, and by extension, dignity in death, for suicidal individuals. Sadly, this is where the problem lies. Opponents of these reforms not do seem to want to discuss in good faith the issues with healthcare. Rather, the debate seems to turn into proponents of the current mental healthcare system trying to defend that their treatment methods work.
The issue with all of this is that like most things, one size fits all approaches do not apply. Plans of action need to be tailored to suit the needs of the individual. This is why it is so frustrating to hear the same rallying cries over and over again from people who criticise the ethos of this website - "You all need to get help! Just get the right help! Find the right help, it's out there!"
Of course, some people are going to be helped by what is out there. However, those populations are likely not going to overlap with the demographics of SS frequent fliers. For most of us, we have tried pretty much every other resource that's available to us, and those endeavours have yielded minimal results. In the entire time I've been browsing this site, I've only seen a minute handfulf of posts where the OP had never saught any sort of help for their issues, and they were always encouraged to do so by those who replied to them.
Clearly, this demonstrates something is not working. If thousands of people feel more comfortable sharing their thoughts on SS than an "expert approved and endorsed" chatline, that indicates their services are not useful to a sizable demographic. This is the point that is consistently ignored. Yes, there may be "help" out there, but for many of us, it isn't helpful in the slightest.
Many people would prefer to get advice from a peer who has been in their shoes, rather than a paid employee who has likely had little to no practical experience with their situation. Yet, many other websites and forums are banning anything they deem as "medical advice." You had side effects from a medication and want to warn someone? Can't do that, it may discourage them from taking drugs! You want to share something that's helped you? Can't do that, god forbid, someone may exercise bodily autonomy and want to try it themselves! Our overlords in the medical beurocracy must make every decision for us.
So this leaves people trapped in a situation where they are forced to engage with doctors or therapists who they personally do not find useful, and find themselves with little control over their treatment plan, because they are seen as infantile idiots who can't make rational decisions. On top of this, you have to hide your suicidality, or else you'll be locked away like a prisoner and lose even more freedom. In what universe is this helpful?
Of course, when one suggests that we should move past the model of involuntary hospitalizations and sectioning, they will always be shut down by the one person who claims it saved their life. People aren't willing to consider that a residential facility with less medical staff and beurocracy, less forced drugging, and more freedom of movement would be far better for a suicidal person's wellbeing than a defacto jail cell featuring solttary confinement and guards watching you piss and shower.
There is always a person who has to chime in, like in the recent NYT debacle, and claim that we shouldn't change anything about the current system because they found the right help through it, and SS is the problem. These positive anecdotes seem to always overshadow the pleas for change, because they uphold the status quo and rationalise inaction. Also, dismissing the stories of people who have been harmed by the system is easier than confronting its failures.
Over and over again you will hear people saying therapy and pills don't help them, because their struggles are beyond the scope of simplistic CBT/DBT, or their mental issues stem from socioeconomic concerns. Outside of SS, I have never seen anyone advocating for better social care as a replacement for expensive therapies that yield minimal gains. With all the money that is wasted on CBT therapist's salaries, we could probably transform social services completely and set up social support systems for isolated and lonely people.
My opinions on this topic will probably be ignored, because it is far easier to shill for hotlines than say the system sucks. All of this assumes that suicide is solely a depression and mental health sphere issue though, when it isn't. Many suicidal people become this way as a result of lifelong ptsd, schizophrenia, autism, adhd, anhedonia, or decades worth of isolation, listlessness, and depression. Likewise, many of us find ourselves here due to environmental factors and somatic illnesses.
Treating suicide as an issue of mental health only has had disastrous consequences for chronically ill people. For example, in many support groups for my condition, CFS, talking about suicide is banned. The discussions are very sanitized, stale, and monitored. You can't express any sentiment that isn't, "OMG I LOVE HAVING MY LIFE RUINED BY A DISEASE THAT ISN'T TAKEN SERIOUSLY BY MY FAMILY, FRIENDS, AND THE MEDICAL ESTABLISHMENT!"
Comments that don't urge the OP to continue searching for the holy grail of the right help get deleted instantly. But the thing is, there are literally no approved treatments or cures for this illness! People will urge other sufferers to spend thousands on private doctors simply so the doctor will validate that they actually are in pain and others will hopefullly gaslight them less. Do others not realize how insane this is??
Oh, but you only want to kill yourself because you're depressed, not because you have a dehabilitating illness that causes you physical pain and makes you feel like a Minecraft zombie all the time. Separating the reasons for ctb into mental versus physical has only created more suicidal people, because if you want to die as a result of a disease that's not classified as mental, you will be labelled as mentally ill regardless and have your sanity questioned.
The original reason I turned to suicide was because my family was abusive. At age 12 or so, I longed for an escape from being mocked and tormented daily by my father's relatives. Yet, all the therapists and psychiatrists I was forced to go to said I was depressed and anxious, and that I needed to be heavily medicated. Was I actually having a mental health crisis? No, I was just tired of being told I was a disgusting fag on my way to hell almost daily, or being threatened with getting kicked out.
This mentality has hurt so many people with crippling, long term mental illnesses, because their issues are always cast away as a temporary bout of depression rather than a terminal affliction that will haunt them for life. By 'normalising' all of this, those who have been suffering in silence for decades will continue to be ignored and labeled as treatment resistant. How about acknowledging your treatment methodology is inherently flawed and ill equipped to deal with long term issues?
No one is trying to take away the current resources from those who want them. All we are advocating for is better methods of care and acknowledgement of the right to die. That is not an attack on your CBT and citalopram, if you find them helpful, yet somehow it is framed as one. Some of us were actually hurt by these things, mind you, but aren't allowed to voice our bad experiences outside of this forum.
However, not everyone will be helped by what exists currently, including modalities that may be considered novel or groundbreaking (I'm looking at you, psychedelics) . That is a harsh fact of life. We can't fix everything. There will always be diseases with no cure, and problems with no solution, as has been the case throughout human history. We can only play God to a certain degree.
Now, there seems to be two ways of coping with this. One of them is being open to the idea that the way "mental healthcare" is practiced needs to be reformed. The other is making euthanasia available to those in truly hopeless circumstances, where one ascertains beyond reasonable doubt, that life is simply not worth living for them anymore and there's nothing more that can be done about it.
These two options are not mutually exclusive. They can coexist as long as the vox populi is willing to admit that these changes are necessary for improving the quality of life, and by extension, dignity in death, for suicidal individuals. Sadly, this is where the problem lies. Opponents of these reforms not do seem to want to discuss in good faith the issues with healthcare. Rather, the debate seems to turn into proponents of the current mental healthcare system trying to defend that their treatment methods work.
The issue with all of this is that like most things, one size fits all approaches do not apply. Plans of action need to be tailored to suit the needs of the individual. This is why it is so frustrating to hear the same rallying cries over and over again from people who criticise the ethos of this website - "You all need to get help! Just get the right help! Find the right help, it's out there!"
Of course, some people are going to be helped by what is out there. However, those populations are likely not going to overlap with the demographics of SS frequent fliers. For most of us, we have tried pretty much every other resource that's available to us, and those endeavours have yielded minimal results. In the entire time I've been browsing this site, I've only seen a minute handfulf of posts where the OP had never saught any sort of help for their issues, and they were always encouraged to do so by those who replied to them.
Clearly, this demonstrates something is not working. If thousands of people feel more comfortable sharing their thoughts on SS than an "expert approved and endorsed" chatline, that indicates their services are not useful to a sizable demographic. This is the point that is consistently ignored. Yes, there may be "help" out there, but for many of us, it isn't helpful in the slightest.
Many people would prefer to get advice from a peer who has been in their shoes, rather than a paid employee who has likely had little to no practical experience with their situation. Yet, many other websites and forums are banning anything they deem as "medical advice." You had side effects from a medication and want to warn someone? Can't do that, it may discourage them from taking drugs! You want to share something that's helped you? Can't do that, god forbid, someone may exercise bodily autonomy and want to try it themselves! Our overlords in the medical beurocracy must make every decision for us.
So this leaves people trapped in a situation where they are forced to engage with doctors or therapists who they personally do not find useful, and find themselves with little control over their treatment plan, because they are seen as infantile idiots who can't make rational decisions. On top of this, you have to hide your suicidality, or else you'll be locked away like a prisoner and lose even more freedom. In what universe is this helpful?
Of course, when one suggests that we should move past the model of involuntary hospitalizations and sectioning, they will always be shut down by the one person who claims it saved their life. People aren't willing to consider that a residential facility with less medical staff and beurocracy, less forced drugging, and more freedom of movement would be far better for a suicidal person's wellbeing than a defacto jail cell featuring solttary confinement and guards watching you piss and shower.
There is always a person who has to chime in, like in the recent NYT debacle, and claim that we shouldn't change anything about the current system because they found the right help through it, and SS is the problem. These positive anecdotes seem to always overshadow the pleas for change, because they uphold the status quo and rationalise inaction. Also, dismissing the stories of people who have been harmed by the system is easier than confronting its failures.
Over and over again you will hear people saying therapy and pills don't help them, because their struggles are beyond the scope of simplistic CBT/DBT, or their mental issues stem from socioeconomic concerns. Outside of SS, I have never seen anyone advocating for better social care as a replacement for expensive therapies that yield minimal gains. With all the money that is wasted on CBT therapist's salaries, we could probably transform social services completely and set up social support systems for isolated and lonely people.
My opinions on this topic will probably be ignored, because it is far easier to shill for hotlines than say the system sucks. All of this assumes that suicide is solely a depression and mental health sphere issue though, when it isn't. Many suicidal people become this way as a result of lifelong ptsd, schizophrenia, autism, adhd, anhedonia, or decades worth of isolation, listlessness, and depression. Likewise, many of us find ourselves here due to environmental factors and somatic illnesses.
Treating suicide as an issue of mental health only has had disastrous consequences for chronically ill people. For example, in many support groups for my condition, CFS, talking about suicide is banned. The discussions are very sanitized, stale, and monitored. You can't express any sentiment that isn't, "OMG I LOVE HAVING MY LIFE RUINED BY A DISEASE THAT ISN'T TAKEN SERIOUSLY BY MY FAMILY, FRIENDS, AND THE MEDICAL ESTABLISHMENT!"
Comments that don't urge the OP to continue searching for the holy grail of the right help get deleted instantly. But the thing is, there are literally no approved treatments or cures for this illness! People will urge other sufferers to spend thousands on private doctors simply so the doctor will validate that they actually are in pain and others will hopefullly gaslight them less. Do others not realize how insane this is??
Oh, but you only want to kill yourself because you're depressed, not because you have a dehabilitating illness that causes you physical pain and makes you feel like a Minecraft zombie all the time. Separating the reasons for ctb into mental versus physical has only created more suicidal people, because if you want to die as a result of a disease that's not classified as mental, you will be labelled as mentally ill regardless and have your sanity questioned.
The original reason I turned to suicide was because my family was abusive. At age 12 or so, I longed for an escape from being mocked and tormented daily by my father's relatives. Yet, all the therapists and psychiatrists I was forced to go to said I was depressed and anxious, and that I needed to be heavily medicated. Was I actually having a mental health crisis? No, I was just tired of being told I was a disgusting fag on my way to hell almost daily, or being threatened with getting kicked out.
This mentality has hurt so many people with crippling, long term mental illnesses, because their issues are always cast away as a temporary bout of depression rather than a terminal affliction that will haunt them for life. By 'normalising' all of this, those who have been suffering in silence for decades will continue to be ignored and labeled as treatment resistant. How about acknowledging your treatment methodology is inherently flawed and ill equipped to deal with long term issues?
No one is trying to take away the current resources from those who want them. All we are advocating for is better methods of care and acknowledgement of the right to die. That is not an attack on your CBT and citalopram, if you find them helpful, yet somehow it is framed as one. Some of us were actually hurt by these things, mind you, but aren't allowed to voice our bad experiences outside of this forum.
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