Supporting Assisted Dying Model may Transform Suicide Prevention

Experts discuss radical assisted dying approaches to help suicidal people, highlighting the detrimental effects of existing suicide prevention services.

In a new book, Alexandre Baril has explained the new suicide prevention approach. He started by coining the term suicidism referring to an oppressive system in which suicidal people experience multiple forms of injustice and violence. Society is replete with horrific stories of suicidal individuals facing inhumane treatment after expressing their suicidal ideations.

The intention of writing this book is to save their lives at all costs. Interventions range from being hospitalized and drugged against their will, to being handcuffed and shot by police, to losing their jobs, to having their parental rights revoked, to even being kicked off university campuses.

Overview Suicide
Suicide is an act of ending one's own life and it usually results from emotional isolations and inability to adjust and cope with one's environment.

‘Opening hearts and imaginations regarding the possibility of assisted suicide from a different point of view, might help people with suicidal thoughts.’

Thus, suicidal people often remain silent and complete their suicide without reaching out to anyone. He also urges that suicide prevention services () do more harm than good. Simply put, suicide prevention often increases deaths by suicide rather than prevents them.

This is especially true for marginalized suicidal people. He believes that suicidal people are oppressed by suicidism and the oppression they experience remains under-theorized.

Best Way to Help People with Suicidal Thoughts is Through the Logic of Prevention

Suicide statistics remain relatively stable and have not improved significantly over the past decades. Despite decades of multiple strategies and billions of dollars invested in outreach initiatives, studies show that those most determined to die carry out their suicidal plans without reaching out for help.

His work found current prevention services generally fail to connect with suicidal people, who do not feel safe asking for help. This silencing effect, due to consequences (experiencing forms of harm when revealing suicidal plans) leads suicidal people to not feel supported to share their distress.

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The most radical idea of this book is to theorize suicide as a positive right that would involve supporting suicidal people in their quest for death through assisted suicide (). This support would be delivered through a suicide-affirmative approach. This might save more lives than current prevention strategies.

This non-stigmatizing approach would provide suicidal people with the chance to speak freely and to benefit from an accompaniment process to reach an informed decision about their desire to live or die.

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This approach has the potential to drastically reduce rates of suicidality, particularly among marginalized groups, by opening channels of communication with people who are currently too afraid to reach out for help.

Slogans such as ‘Speak Up, Reach Out’ or ‘Let’s Talk’ urge suicidal people to share their distress. But suicide prevention services send a paradoxical message since those who open their hearts often experience harm, forced treatments, and rights violations in the name of care and of saving vulnerable people from themselves, all because suicide is never an option.

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Now, suicide becomes an option, one that should be carefully thought through within an accompanied process during which various options would be seriously considered to help the person make an informed decision.

By removing the violence suicidal people experience when they share their suicidal ideations and plans, and by supporting the assisted suicide of the person if they determine that this is indeed the best option for them, suicidal people would finally feel safe to speak up, reach out for help and talk about their distress.

Priority is the Suicidal Person, Not Life Itself

Instead of completing their suicide without speaking with anyone, they would be accompanied as they contemplate making this crucial decision, weighing all the pros and cons, informing their relatives and family members, and preparing for this passage from life to death ().

Throughout history, some philosophers, bioethicists, and thinkers have promoted the right to die by suicide, but it’s always a negative right. Those in favor of a positive right to die limit this exclusively to the context of assisted death in the case of disability/sickness/illness.

A shift from prevention to accompaniment would empower suicidal people. Similarly to a trans-affirmative approach, the suicide-affirmative approach offers care and support through an informed consent model, taking for granted that the expert in the decision to transition—in this case, from life to death—is the person making the decision.

Indeed, everything needs to be imagined, theorized, and transformed, as was the case for trans people several decades ago when transitioning was not even an option.

References:

Suicide Prevention - (https://www.psychiatry.org/patients-families/suicide-prevention)
Undoing Suicidism: A Trans, Queer, Crip Approach to Rethinking (Assisted) Suicide - (https://temple.manifoldapp.org/projects/undoing-suicidism)

Source-Eurekalert