Young woman with PTSD who survived Brussels airport terror attack 'euthanised'
mirror.co.uk
mirror.co.uk
In general, it's not something that can be done on a whim. You can't walk in to your doctor's office with a depression and come out in a body bag. There's a process, and you need the approval of multiple doctors (or shrinks).
While suicide might seem like a cowardly way out to some, there are other sufferers who choose to take their chances with electro-shock therapy, which has experienced rejuvenated interest over the past 20 years. It should be clear, however, that anyone pursuing it has exhausted all over treatment and is still suffering to some great extent.
We are talking about a teen into 23 with improperly treated mental health issue here. People get treated for decades for this kind of thing, not 5 years of trying mostly new drugs with side effects to paper over it.
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Wikipedia unreliable sources page https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Potentially_unreliab...
> In general, tabloid newspapers, such as The Sun, Daily Mirror, the Daily Mail (see also the February 2017 RFC discussing its validity), equivalent television shows, should be used with caution, especially if they are making sensational claims.
According to other sources, this person with alleged PTSD bit certainly major depression showed capacity for improvement. She boarded planes and went later to Rome for a holiday, boarded plane and almost went for another. (I am trying to find the source in English.) Now there also was the matter of an alternate specialized treatment group for people exactly in this attack by the university professor, treatment she refused. Additionally the reports tend to be spun to make it seem as if she outran the bomb - she was actually only in the same building far away from the blast.
Most importantly the duration of treatment was too short, she was young and we do not have information on whether modalities other than drugs were used, but if they were, they were too short term. And these drugs that have as black box side effects iatrogenic suicidality.
I believe standards of care were not adhered to. The two physicians writing the opinion were duped or negligent. Unfortunately in mental health cases a lot relies on the medical history which tends to be spotty, and reports from the patient.
Belgium is really special in allowing even very young people to access euthanasia. There was a case of a teen with just mental illness like previously. This girl here was 23.
https://www.vrt.be/vrtnws/nl/2022/10/07/euthanasie-na-aansla...
This article says that her first suicide attempt was after she had been sexually assaulted by a fellow patient at the mental hospital where she was being treated:
https://meaww.com/shanti-de-corte-2016-brussels-airport-isis...
'euthanised'
in quotes no less. just a disgusting manipulation of their readers.
Very good point.
Antidepressants are tricky. They can take awhile to work, and usually the goal is subtle changes in one’s brain chemistry.
I’m not a doctor and was never taking more than 1-2 meds at any one time, but the article made it sound like the primary things they tried involved “throw some more meds at it”. And these meds can also directly impact one’s emotional state, sometimes to the point that they make things definitively worse.
When dealing with things that happened to us, meds are like a cast or bandage. They help hold things in place while healing happens. Healing from trauma doesn’t just happen by taking meds. It happens by doing sometimes grueling internal work.
> That the victim and doctor went up to that because they found it was a good laugh, and a fun joke to carry over 6 years?
This is a pretty bizarre conclusion.
Obviously none of us have all of the details, but to me, the takeaway is “maybe throwing more meds at this is not the answer”.
To conclude this is not to imply that they didn’t take what they were doing seriously.
She even reflects on this in one post where she mentions that maybe meds aren’t the only solution.
> In one post, she wrote: "I get a few medications for breakfast. And up to 11 antidepressants a day.
You could be right and this is an exaggeration, but it’s a quote directly attributed to her, and it’s the only info we have. Otherwise we might as well not discuss any of this.
I don’t think any of us have enough good info about this situation to form solid opinions, but I do think the circumstances sound like they need more scrutiny.
She started using THC (hadn't used it even recreationally before then), and weaned off using her meds. Not only the hallucinations stopped... so did a LOT of her other symptoms. She became way more normal than I ever knew her as being, and got in a few years of full time employment doing public speaking to some surprisingly high level audiences.
The more meds she was taking, the worse her mental health got. One pill made her keep sticking her tongue out. Another pill countered that reaction. And so on. So, eleven different meds is entirely possibly what the person in the article meant.
Not surprisingly, cutting off the handfuls of pills brought my friend back to Earth, and now she's using more human (non-chemical) therapy-related efforts to help her mental health.
She would have eventually killed herself if the drugs didn't eventually poison her first. Now she's pretty much down to suffering age-related aches and pains instead, doing native Powwows, and fending for her demanding and shockingly obese orange cat. She still has the borderline personality, but living a much better life.
In her words "less crazee!" without all the pills.
How is that handled inside the ethical framework that governs euthanasia? It must be a consideration.
The remaining thing to try would be hallucinogens. LSD, psylocibin or perhaps ibogaine. These are different and unpredictable enough to maybe work. And this is a case where, since it is otherwise bad enough, even electroshock therapy could be of value. Since these are way past typical options and probably now banned, they would require special handling.
(Assuming VR therapy and standard CBT have been exhausted. And TMS showed no improvement.)
I would never give hallucinogens to a depressed person, that could be enough hell to break someone’s mind permanently.
If the other option is killing them, hallucinogens start to look a lot more reasonable
First, she claimed to be on 11 antidepressants, I doubt it but I bet she was on a few. ecstasy and many anti-depressants are serotogenic and you'll give her serotonin syndrome. You really don't want to screw with that, there's reports of ecstasy users ended up with permanent depression issues. To lower such risks, you'd want to ween somebody suicidal off anti-d's first to take a drug that's pretty similar to anti-d's in the first place. There's some recent research that shows if you've already done the one you won't benefit as much from the other usually [1] but if you were going to do this I'd taper off some of the anti-d's first.
The idea of taking heroin for mental health so you can go to rehab I think speaks to buying into Hollywood narratives. Hitting rock bottom doesn't help you recover from mental health issues usually, it only makes your mental health worse, look around people who don't have a home and you won't see paragon's of mental health.
[1] https://www.psypost.org/2021/03/previous-antidepressant-use-...
Those are socially constructed concepts and society decides their metes and bounds.
Most places have a blanket prohibition on assisted death, which seems more authoritarian to me.
A dignified assisted death means you end your life on your terms.
I wouldn't call suicide an improvement over proper treatment or social help. And we're not talking a terminal case here.
I'd say no, of course not. You tell them it's a bad move. You don't give them a lift to the bank so they can withdraw the money.
I wouldn't advocate breaking their arms so they're unable to sign the paper work but there has to be things you can do short of watching them ruin their lives (or actively helping them), right?
And that they should traumatise their friends and / or family in the process because that is traditional?
This has a bit more detail and somekind of review was done.
https://nypost.com/2022/10/08/brussels-bombing-survivor-shan...
But I think all Doctors that treated her should be looked at in more detail.
Would you be okay with privately run Futurama-style street kiosks, though? https://futurama.fandom.com/wiki/Suicide_Booth
Going down that feasibility line of thought just leads to Minority Report.
What you are describing is the new fear gun culture gripping America and it passes the buck in the wrong direction.
The word "intention" is completely inappropriate here.
I don't buy a fire extinguisher with the intention of having a fire. Nor do I buy insurance with the intention of having a fire, getting in a car accident, or getting sick.
Target shooting, whether in competition or simply for fun.
Fishermen often shoot large fish (e.g., halibut, which can weigh hundreds of pounds) before boating them, to reduce the likelihood of injury.
Defense against aggressive wildlife.
Defense against aggressive humans that doesn't involve killing them, or even injuring them (very often merely displaying the weapon is enough to deter an attacker).
There are other uses that come to mind.
Perhaps your inability to think of these routine and completely justifiable uses indicates that you have serious deficiencies in your knowledge of firearms, and that you should perhaps make an effort to rectify those gaps before commenting on the subject again. Maybe?
I mean, even your use of "9mm Glock" indicates that most of what you think you know comes from TV shows and movies.
"Glock" is just a brand, yo... the brand name doesn't actually make the weapon more lethal.
In point of fact, 9mm ACP is a rather small and underpowered round. It's become popular with law enforcement agencies because it reduces the weight of the weapon they have to carry all the time, not because it is some fearsome Round of Doom.
I actually have guns for most of the activities you mentioned (except shooting fish - that seems unnecessary, and I've been on quite a few boats), and the Glock isn't ideal for any of them.
I was under the impression that most LEO's used .40, not 9mm because yes, it isn't a particularly powerful round.
Nonsense.
If that is the case, then one can only conclude that 99.995% of Glock pistols are defective, since they are never used to kill anyone.
> except shooting fish - that seems unnecessary, and I've been on quite a few boats
"Unnecessary" until the thrashing fish breaks your leg.
https://c1.staticflickr.com/5/4100/4867089228_0c182849be_b.j...
Glocks are popular in this application as the polymer frame is more resistant to sea water.
I do not believe this happened here, the girl was treated at most 6 years. Describing it as 6 years of anguish is uncharitable to people who survived mental health problems for decades, and even manage to live with them.
It can take years to find out that a certain therapy even works... And here we have people hastily resorting to big red button, even after messing up previous suicide attempts.
I would not call it euthanasia, it's suicide by doctor. (In parallel with suicide by cop.)
If I want to end it, does it have to be messy (as in jumping in front of a train)? Or not well working (as in jumping from a window and ending up paralyzed - which indeed will stop me from further silly attempts)?
The government has a duty to facilitate it.
There's no reason to be rude about an innocent woman's death. Show some respect.
I am with you that we must have human laws that treat people like adults and not toddlers and facilitate their rightful choices.