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Dutch woman, 29, granted euthanasia approval on grounds of mental suffering
(www.theguardian.com)
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this post was submitted on 16 May 2024
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I am all about giving people the possibility to put an end to their lives and there are plenty of people who are living almost unbearable lives, full of pain and suffering. And I know it is wrong to judge people without being in their shoes but, part of me is refusing to accept that a person who is apparently, young and physically healthy and in a relationship where the other partner obviously cares about her is so depressive and miserable that she wants to die.
So I have mixed feelings in this particular case and I feel sorry for her family and partner, who I am sure really wanted her to get better.
Nevertheless, I am happy that there are still doctors who are willing to take such cases because I can imagine how hard and psychologically challenging it would be to work with those people and they have my full respect.
Yeah, especially with curable and non progressive conditions
Did you read the article? She's been in intensive care for her mental health for a decade. This wasn't some spur of the moment decision. Its taken 10 years to get to this point. To state that mental illnesses are curable and non-progressive is pure ignorance and you would do yourself well to learn how poor the prognosis is for people with severe mental illness. There isn't a cure. You never feel whole or normal. Medication is a shot in the dark most of the time. Therapy doesn't help everybody. Some people are truly and completely untreatable, and she is one of those people
Lol
Name a single curable mental illness.
I'll help you out: there aren't any. Some can be managed and worked around in day to day life. Some people may achieve a reasonable quality of life, but their illness will never totally disappear
I am a psychotherapist. Mental disorders are often curable. Our mind, our psyche, our brain develop and change in every waking moment, one small increment at a a time. A good indication for this are mental disorders themselves. Their emergence is proof of our mind's capability to change - for the worse, in this case, but change nonetheless.
So in theory it should always be possible to change the other way around, to get significantly better to the point where the disorder is no longer present. (If you define a episode of mental health and wellbeing after a depressive episode as "managing" a still present disorder, then sure, they are incurable, but that's because that's part of your definition to begin with. The symptoms of a mental disorder can definitely disappear.) A more difficult question would be if our surroundings and social realities allow for so much change to take place. And sometimes, unfortunately, this isn't possible, since our society can be a fucked up place and economic constrains have an unavoidable influence on our capability to shape our own path.
Still, in my personal experience working with hundreds of patiens in different therapeutic setting, most people can (and do) reclaim their mental health, given supportive surroundings and adequate treatment. From your pessimistic outlook at mental health I will cautiously assume that you don't have those widely available to you. In this case you'd be somewhat right: Under such circumstances the possibilities to cure mental disorders are limited. Another complicating factor might be mental disorders themselves though. The feeling of "this is never going to get better, I'll never be happy again" is one most people with depressive disorders know all to well. So if we ask the affected people directly we will often arrive at the conclusion that the disorders are in fact incurable. And that's a horrible feeling for sure. I find it important to remember though that what our thoughts tell us in those dark episodes isn't necessarily the truth. In this case I'd argue it isn't. I've seen too many examples of the opposite, luckily.
This isn't a problem with "my" definition of cure. I'm using the commonly understood definition. If someone is successfully managing their type 1 diabetes with insulin and a healthy diet we don't say they're cured. They still have diabetes. If they stopped taking their meds and ate a ton of carb heavy foods they'd wind up in the hospital in a matter of days.
Same goes with mental illness. If you stop taking your meds, going to therapy, etc. your mental state will decline again. They're still mentally ill, they're just managing it.
Perhaps some people have acute moments of distress to the point where it's clinically significant and treatment helps them weather that moment. Eventually they may return to their baseline of not needing drugs or therapy. But given the context of this thread (a woman killing herself after a decade of unsuccessful treatment) I figured it was fair to assume chronic mental illness. Something to the tune of major depression, bipolar disorders, schizophrenia, etc.
The word cure isn't a fluid term to me or most people. It's something that connotes permentant relief of a person's signs and symptoms of a given illness. Something that often isn't the case for mental illness