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Comment by defrost | Hacker News Reader

I'm with @navane, you're concerned about what is very much a minority edge case.

Still, I'll bite - it's a good thing.

Why? Well an official path to suicide, as per the arrangements already in place, comes with layers of professional guidance and counselling.

It's not a dispassionate "wave 'em through" treadmill of corpse creation.

The best thing for young people with suicidal affixations is to talk to them and take their concerns seriously, correctly established this could arguably reduce teen suicides by recognising the problem, giving the at risk a place to go, requiring them to detail why they want to die, etc.

If you want to take a dim view of faceless government motivations then you might ask yourself why such a souless collective would want to deprive itself of a potential taxpayer before they've even really started to chip in.

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I get your point, but there are already MULTIPLE examples of people combining the mental-health component + some externality that is fundamentally a societal failing and coming to the conclusion that MAID is the optimal outcome.

"An expert committee reviewing euthanasia deaths in Canada’s most populous province has identified several cases in which patients asked [AND WERE APPROVED] to be killed in part for social reasons such as isolation and fears of homelessness, raising concerns over approvals for vulnerable people in the country’s assisted dying system."

"Another case focused on Ms B, a woman in her 50s suffering from multiple chemical sensitivity syndrome, who had a history of mental illness including suicidality and post-traumatic stress disorder. She was socially isolated and asked to die largely because she could not get proper housing, according to the report."

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/oct/17/canada-nonterm...

And?

That's a serious ask, not a snarky response.

The headline is Canadians with nonterminal conditions sought assisted dying for social reasons

and my question is, so what happened? Was she killed by the state or did she get some much needed assistance with housing, etc. (or neither).

I'd argue that her coming forward is a good thing in the big picture as it adds concrete examples and data for making a case for better social policy and outcomes.

There’s a stigma/taboo attached to suicide, and that’s because suicide is kind of a show-stopper bug opened for modern society. And it does not want to admit the problem because it’s not capable of doing anything about it. Support phone numbers or “talk to someone” are there to defuse and keep the person living so they die of old age. Or if they do suicide successfully later on, the system washes its hands clean and avoids dealing with ingrained deep issues that cause suicides.

Both examples were killed by the state... That's my point, the safeguards failed and the people were euthanized...

Both cases concerned people who requested euthansia, and repeatedly so.

Both cases were borderline and raised concerns.

Both cases were reviewed.

It is imposssible to have any such system in the real world that does not have concerning edge cases.

It is a system that many people want for both themselves and for their relatives in cases that are clearcut.

The problematic reality about people with mental issues and disabilities is that they are also autonomous people who have opinions, think for themselves, and sometimes decide that their own circumstances are no longer tenable following years, decades even, of struggling through.

See eg: The Last Leg from the UK.

It's not desirable to have a system that kills people that don't want to die and wouldn't choose death if they had better options.

What are the housing options for people with chronic mental issues (eg: the extreme examples of schizophrenia, bipolar disorders, etc) that have no support and have exhausted friends and relatives?

These are not easy problems.

What is your proposed solution?

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