I'm 71, have lived an OK life, find myself alone with a serious medical condition that will eventually leave me immobile. I've been an right-to-die supporter for over 50 years, and strongly agree with Dr. Philip Nitschke and Exit International's philosophy that "every adult of sound mind has the right to implement plans for the end of their life so that their death is reliable, peaceful and at a time of their choosing." (Quoted from their website.)
Everyone has their own opinions on just about everything! The above is my opinion on the issue of suicide, just my opinion. If other people feel differently, they have that right. As an artist and a teacher and an activist, I have defended that right my whole life.
My opinion is that the world is
not a place where everyone is censored, tortured or impoverished. There is love and truth and beauty to be found, but perhaps it must be fought for, these days more than ever. If I was healthy I'd stick around!
Also,
just in my humble little opinion, if a teenager fails a history test or breaks-up with their boyfriend/girlfriend, that may be agonizingly troubling to that person in the short run but
NOT a reason to commit suicide! From what I've seen on this forum, almost everyone agrees and usually--with compassion--tries to do a bit of gentle counseling. That's a great thing about this site that I think many media-critics don't understand.
I love your idea of a non-profit to help people, it's exactly what we need. Hope you can pull it off!
The way mental illness is diagnosed, is not advanced enough to determine whether or not the patient will get better.
If and when a person goes years without improvement/with a deteriorating case of mental illness, I feel they should be allowed to access physician assisted death.
Just because we cannot determine the exact thoughts that someone else thinks and the kind of hurt these thoughts cause them, does not mean these thoughts are "too dark to be real and too fleeting to be taken seriously."
Many of us mentally ill people are dismissed by clinicians and our circle of loved ones, as someone who just needs some "mindfulness", a euphemism as far as I am concerned, for entering the mental rape culture of rampant unwarranted optimism.
Other than that, they tell us we are "fine" and "healthy", especially when we stop revealing our innermost thoughts because we feel we are repeating ourselves an they just get anxious themselves and or put u into the psych ward for a while. We have no voice. No one literally no one takes our negative thoughts seriously.
The best we can get is: These thoughts are not helpful to you, change your thoughts and you will be happy. So dismissive. Even people who have agonizing thoughts for a while (short run), do not want to listen and become empathetic enough to do something.
I am thinking of people with catastrophic and sudden destruction of a loveable life, say, Joe Biden when his wife and daughter died in a car accident. He admitted to being temporarily suicidal and finally understanding why a rational being would contemplate suicide. There is a way to keep Sleepy Joe busy. Help people who feel like that day-in day-out to end it !
There is one single reason why I want to become an assisted dying activist. For me, there is nothing else that interests me. After 2 failed attempts this year, and 3 years of upheaval after divorcing a very rich man (we were married 20 years) who went to court to deny me a settlement (I got a little bit of money and yes I too can afford Pegasos), there is nothing else that interests me at all.
Another thing about the past 50 years. In this timeframe, we have gone from wanting to implement as many social nets as possible and full employment (in the US and UK) to a 180 degree turn around to an age of "mental rape culture" of rampant capitalism that does NOT stop when it comes to drug dealing, delivering weapons to bad hombres, polluting nature and limiting and astronomically inflating the prices of resources (i.e. water) that we all need to keep households of all levels of society going, rich, poor and in between (the in between thinning out as we speak). As a consequence of this planetary negation of human needs, and emphasizing the idea that a wealthy elite will keep everyone else in the clover via the nefarious and elusive "Trickle Down Effect". There is no trickle down effect. Trillions of dollars are in tax havens, the rich are refusing to pay taxes. (My ex is one of those) There is more war, more hunger, more child labour every year.
I am 56 and I know that I have idly stood by during those past 50 years, while you have been supporting assisted death, doing art and teaching and so on, while this whole planet has been raped by corrupt illegal inhumane capitalism that has hijacked most avenues that could prosecute them,using crooked lawyers and other corporate entities creating financial shelters for the wealthy. (and in some countries corruption and human rights violations disguised as communism,not really any better than a capitalist "democracy" where you can vote for a corrupt candidate but there is no box on the voting slip to say that all candidates are corrupt which is why the voter is not voting for them). Beauty to be in the eye of the beholder or the person that enjoys the privilege to be able to abuse and exploit others, to maintain that everyone cannot be helped to be financially secure because "that is unaffordable" (for whom?people spend 15.5 billion dollars of plastic surgery in the US every year) It think that is all disgusting...
