{"id":263137,"date":"2022-02-22T12:40:51","date_gmt":"2022-02-22T18:40:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.liveaction.org\/news\/?p=263137"},"modified":"2022-02-21T16:23:17","modified_gmt":"2022-02-21T22:23:17","slug":"assisted-suicide-people-anorexia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.liveaction.org\/news\/assisted-suicide-people-anorexia\/","title":{"rendered":"Assisted suicide now being promoted for people with anorexia"},"content":{"rendered":"
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(National Review<\/a>) The push is now on to allow assisted suicide for psychiatric patients. The\u00a0Journal of Eating Disorders<\/em>\u00a0has published a piece urging that psychiatrists be allowed to assist the suicides of patients afflicted with anorexia who want to die rather than continue to struggle against their mental illness.<\/p>\n

Think about this. Seriously. Assisted suicide is being pushed as a \u201ctreatment\u201d for serious psychiatric disorders in a respected medical journal. Awful.<\/p>\n

First, the authors push the nonsense that assisted suicide isn\u2019t really suicide. From \u201cTerminal Anorexia Nervosa<\/a>\u201c:<\/p>\n

Designating terminal AN may more readily enable patients to receive palliative care, hospice care, and emotional and practical resources for loved ones, as well as access to medical aid in dying (MAID) where legal. Therapeutic goals in these situations are to ameliorate suffering and honor the life lived. Of note, MAID is offered to individuals whose death is inevitable within six months from an underlying disease process; it provides patients a choice in\u00a0how\u00a0they die, not\u00a0whether\u00a0they die. It is not a means of suicide.<\/em><\/p>\n

Semantics. The death is caused either by the patient ingesting a lethal dose of barbiturates to cause death \u2014 suicide \u2014 or in other countries, via lethal injection \u2014 legalized homicide. It is not dying a natural death.<\/p>\n

READ:\u00a0Pushback in Ireland over euthanasia bill: \u2018This isn\u2019t a gentle, peaceful death\u2019<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

The idea expressed is that some cases of anorexia are so severe, they should be considered terminal, like cancer. But mental illness is not like an implacable biological disease process. The person with severe mental illness can be kept going. It might be very difficult. It might require even involuntary hospitalization. With anorexia, if the patient was compelled to receive nutrition, she wouldn\u2019t die. We might not want to do that, but we\u00a0could<\/em>. That is not true of diseases like terminal cancer (which should also not qualify for assisted suicide).<\/p>\n

Never mind all that. The authors want patients with \u201cterminal\u201d anorexia to have access to assisted suicide:<\/p>\n

Acknowledging the considerable controversies surrounding MAID for patients with mental disorders, we also submit that patients with terminal AN who are severely physiologically compromised, and whose end-of life suffering results from both psychological and physical pain, should be afforded access to medical aid in dying in locations where such assistance has been legalized\u2014just like other patients with terminal conditions.<\/em><\/p>\n

That\u2019s abandonment, no matter how well-meaning. Sometimes, the only thing standing between a severely mentally ill patient and death is a dedicated psychiatrist or psychologist.<\/p>\n

By the way, allow assisted suicide for \u201cterminal\u201d mental illness and it wouldn\u2019t necessarily be psychiatrists who prescribed the poison. In theory,\u00a0any<\/em>\u00a0doctor could do it. Cases of death doctors prescribing lethally outside their specialties in jurisdictions allowing assisted suicide and euthanasia are ubiquitous. For example, in Belgium,\u00a0an\u00a0oncologist<\/em><\/a>\u00a0euthanized a woman who wanted to die because of her unremitting depression. The same kind of thing has happened in the U.S., albeit not involving mental illness.<\/p>\n

The paper presents three severe cases to justify allowing assisted suicide. They break your heart.\u00a0But hard cases make for bad law<\/em>. Allowing assisted suicide for psychiatric illnesses would open the door wide for medicalized killing.<\/p>\n

If you doubt me, consider this from the paper:<\/p>\n

AN carries the second highest mortality rate in the DSM-5 after opioid use disorder, with a death rate estimated at 5\u201316 times that of the general population.<\/em><\/p>\n

Then why not allow an intentional, lethal opioid overdose as a \u201ctreatment\u201d for opioid use disorder? Once you open the door for one by redefining it as \u201cterminal,\u201d you won\u2019t be able to keep others out.<\/p>\n

When psychiatrists give up on their mentally ill patients \u2014 and indeed, are allowed to\u00a0help them commit suicide\u00a0<\/em>\u2014 who will defend the value and continued importance of their lives? How will these very unhappy people be kept among us during their darkest days?<\/p>\n

Editor’s Note: This article was originally published at National Review<\/a> and is reprinted here with permission.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cLike\u201d Live Action News on Facebook<\/a>\u00a0for more pro-life news and commentary!<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

(National Review) The push is now on to allow assisted suicide for psychiatric patients. The\u00a0Journal of Eating Disorders\u00a0has published a piece urging that psychiatrists be allowed to assist the suicides of patients afflicted with anorexia who want to die rather than continue to struggle against their mental illness. Think about this. Seriously. Assisted suicide is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":349,"featured_media":211607,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false},"categories":[7077,4,3473],"tags":[1577,1303,15915,10290,10289,15914],"yoast_head":"\nAssisted suicide now being promoted for people with anorexia<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"To use assisted suicide as a "treatment" for mental illness, including eating disorders such as anorexia, is the abandonment of the patient.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/archive.liveaction.org\/news\/assisted-suicide-people-anorexia\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Assisted suicide now being promoted for people with anorexia\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"To use assisted suicide as a "treatment" for mental illness, including eating disorders such as anorexia, is the abandonment of the patient.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/archive.liveaction.org\/news\/assisted-suicide-people-anorexia\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Live Action News\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/liveaction\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2022-02-22T18:40:51+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2022-02-21T22:23:17+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/archive.liveaction.org\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/GettyImages-113425881-assisted-suicide.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"1194\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"650\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Wesley J. 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