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Sherman Alexie's avatar

Suicidal ideation is very common for people with bipolar disorder. As are suicide attempts and successful suicides. I'm bipolar and I grapple with suicidal ideation. As part of my intensive therapy, and with proper meds, I've learned tools that help me deal with the suicidal ideation. But it's a brutal struggle sometimes. So does Canada mean to allow bipolar people to commit suicide? At any adult age? That saddens and angers me. My suicidal ideation is a temporary symptom of my mental illness. I spend more time in euthymia than in either manic or depressed states. But will Canada allow bipolar people to kill themselves when they're experiencing the recklessness and despondency that comes with mood episodes? When their decision-making is so compromised? This feels distinctly unhealthy and immoral.

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Lauri's avatar

This article and concept is extremely relevant to our family, or rather, it was last year. My 16 year old grandson was in unbearable and increasing pain, and no one could find the cause or any method to ease the pain. He went to several of the best hospitals in the Northeast of the US, then his parents began to look further afield and at alternatives. He was taken to Arkansas to a clinic for Complex Regional Pain Syndrome, which did not succeed in any way in lessening the pain or in finding and curing the cause, because, as it turned out, it was not CRPS. A couple of fascinating and dedicated doctors in Louisiana and Texas did some extraordinary work with him using frequencies, which had some effect, but his condition continued to worsen despite a slight diminution of the pain. The most powerful effect was the love and focus of prayer that he received in the treatments in hospitals and clinics in the South. But his pain was unrelenting- and no amount of morphine or any other drugs made it bearable. He had lost the ability to ingest any nutrients, even by IV, for at least a month before he died. Family friends researched and could not find any place at that time where a minor could legally be the recipient of euthanasia.

In fact, though the family and the boy considered that this would be appropriate, even given the situation, no one was ready to make that happen. Right up until the end he continued to live, to love, to be present. I don't know at what point he would have been administered a death-giving cocktail were it legal- it's a situation frankly too awful to contemplate now. As he gradually lost fifty pounds - he died weighing about 70 lbs- the level of pain was unbearable, yet no one knew what to do. No one had anything to offer. No one wants to let someone so loved to die, but to allow someone suffer like that is not conscionable. There are times when there are no good solutions, only accommodations to suffering. I will never be a campaigner for assisted suicide. As another comment states, it's too easy for temporary states of depression or illness to be taken as signs that a life should end. As for my grandson's life, every day, suffering or not, was precious. There was no way out but onward. I'm trying to imagine what it would have been like for his father, his mother, his other grandmother, his brother, his cousins, his aunts and uncles and friends- all of whom came to see him in Louisiana, if someone had offered him death, in a cup. Maybe if that were a commonly recognized option we could have handled it. He spoke of it often, saying he'd like to die- but without the bitterness or rage that would have made it seem like the best, albeit cruelly withheld, option.

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