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Comment by TexanFeller | Hacker News Reader

Suicide is the ultimate “my body, my choice” issue, even more than abortion is. It’s monstrous to force someone with severe mental health problems to live if they don’t want to. I live an incredible life now that people envy, but I’ve had been through torturous mental health problems in the past. If I knew I had to face a year or two of my dark times again and I’d have 50 more years of my great life afterward I’m not sure if I’d choose to live.

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The entire reason why the mental illness discussion is complicated is because with mental illness it’s not clear it is a choice.

And this isn’t even something made up for the particular case of assisted suicide. The idea that someone with mental illness cannot make legitimate choice has been around in the legal system for a while, with mental illness leading to reduced sentences, and even being the basis of acquittal in many situations.

> The idea that someone with mental illness cannot make legitimate choice has been around in the legal system for a while

There is mental illness and then there is competence, they are related but not the same. Complicating things further in this case would be things like reactive mental states (grieving etc) which might for a time manifest like mental illness but tend to be not diagnosed.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Competence_(law)

Thank you! This is EXACTLY the issue I've been failing to articulate.

They should do a study where they do fake maids (like catching a jumper) and then seeing if they regret living another month.

Are you calling for nonconsensual human experiments that will (depending on the outcome) either inflict grave emotional injury onto people who are already so badly injured that they want to die, or that'll be used as a justification for stripping people of their bodily autonomy?

Yes, like catching people with nets who jump off bridges (and a vast majority are thankful of it).

MAID is the net in the context of impulse driven suicide. If a person’s natural death is not reasonably foreseeable, there is a 90 day assessment period.

The government defines reasonable to save money. I’m surprised at people who think bureaucrats like those from the motor vehicle licensing departments will be able to handle such decisions.

Catching people who jump off bridges doesn't involve lying to people who're entrusting you with their very last bit hope.

> and a vast majority are thankful of it

A statistic that (assuming it's true) suffers from the obvious self-selection bias of people who chose to jump off a bridge knowing there was a net to catch their fall.

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