Is Depression Curable? Should Depressed People Have the Option of Euthanasia? (drug, death)

[kgordeeva]

Originally Posted by Amy1190

Don't be ignorant. Therapy and pills can't help everyone. There are some people who simply want to be gone, but are too afraid to pull the trigger for fear of pain or failure.

Would you feel this way if you had a very close family member who felt this way? What if it was your child? Would you actually be okay with that person killing themselves? What do you think about people who have children? Should they just abandon and traumatize them forever?

[purehuman]

Originally Posted by kgordeeva

I don't believe in euthanasia if a person is just depressed. I believe that counseling and help can help almost anyone. I was just saying that a lethal injection will let the person go more peacefully than if the person shot himself and there was blood everywhere.

Well, it wouldn't let them go "peacefully" as you say...cause if they shot themself they'd be dead and the "blood everywhere" wouldn't be something they'd even know...Murder (euthanasia) IS, like you said, maybe a much "cleaner" way to die, for those tending after...Not everyone who is euthanized are given drugs to slip away...some are just denied water and die of thirst. THAT don't sound peaceful to me..or they're denied food or medicines to help them...it's called "passive euthanasia" when the person dies because of something that's NOT done to help them...sounds pretty cruel to me. Active euthanasia is when something is done TO the ailing patient to hasten their deaths.
Warning - Are You Being Targeted For Euthanasia?

[Lacerta]

I don't think it should be allowed for minors, obviously (one person mentioned they would have done it in their teens).

Here is my story. I am genetically predisposed to suffer from chronic depression. I have been on medication from time to time, I have been to a psychiatrist many times. 90% of the time, I am fine, and medication is not necessary, but small events that most people would shake off sometimes send me into a downward spiral, and I have to be medicated for a year or so. One entire side of my family struggles with this. My dad is bipolar, my sister has OCD, one cousin is successfully medicated for bipolar, and is pretty normal, but another killed himself at age 18, another is a drug addict, another is bipolar, mostly manifesting as an addiction to spending large amounts of money when in her manic stages. This was one factor in my decision not to have children.

I can say that medication does help, if you can find the right one for you in the right dosage, which can take some experimentation. But sometimes the side effects are as bad as the disease. Personally, between the depression itself and the medication, my memory is now swiss cheese. My short term memory is very bad, and there are huge holes in my long term memory. For example, I was around 25 when my grandmother died (around 10 years ago), and I have absolutely no recollection of her funeral. I don't even remember which city it was in, or where she is buried. And she lived with us my entire childhood, not some far away grandma I met twice. So pretty bad.

There is a difference between living and just being alive. Right now, I am living and enjoying my life. But if I were to outlive my husband and my sister, I would have to be medicated for the rest of my life in order to continue to function, at which point I would just be being kept alive. At that time, I would hope there would be someplace I could go to just go to sleep peacefully and be done.

So in summary, I think it should be available for the chronically depressed who truly do have nothing in their lives to live for. No one should be forced to just keep breathing for the sake of breathing. But I think there should be a need for some sort of checking to make sure the person can't be helped. Perhaps a medical history and psychological exam. There is a big difference between someone who just lost a loved one and is in a "funk", and someone who has suffered chronic depression their entire life.

[veuvegirl]

Absolutely not, even people who are chronically depressed have ups and downs. First I would think Euthanasia should be put in place for the very sick that have no quality of life and are barely living.

[Amy1190]

Originally Posted by kgordeeva

Would you feel this way if you had a very close family member who felt this way? What if it was your child? Would you actually be okay with that person killing themselves? What do you think about people who have children? Should they just abandon and traumatize them forever?

Yes. If there was no hope for them If they really wanted to die I would respect that, no matter how hard.

[katie45]

I know several people who are bipolar (clinical depression). One, being my niece, struggled for decades to find the correct meds/dosage and finally she and her doctor were able to hit on ones that have been working wonderfully for her for several years now.

However, I know of others who have also tried for many decades to find the right meds and to no avail.

Some, not all, but some will give up once the very uncomfortable side effects kick in; or, if they start to feel better on the meds will think they're okay and stop taking them.

It can be a long hard road to find the right meds and it takes a lot of patience and perseverance.

I don't know if depression is actually curable; but with the right doctor/meds it can be controlled and maintained so that a person can function and live a relatively normal life (whatever that is).

[GJJG2012]

Misery may last for a lifetime, especially birth defects or maybe defects caused by all the vaccinations Drs. force on babies before 1st birth. Some never really recover from serious accidents or injuries.

The US Dispensatory of 1851 listed cannabis as a good medicine for people with mental health issues. But it was made illegal in 1937, as pharmaceticals cos. decided they could make so much more money with patented drugs for every individual condition. Also made illegal to protect profits of many industries.

Another consequence of this prohibition was since 2008 cannabis oil has been shown to cure cancers & other fatal illneses. Rick Simpson cured 5,000 for free, using $1.3 million life savings. US govt ordered Canada to arrest him as a dealer! Life imprisonment for saving 5,000 people! Now police try to stop any medical marijuana, like they think any degree of legalization would be the worst disaster in the history of the world. No MJ=more suicides, more homicides, more cancer deaths. There are 124 conditions it can often better and more safely than pills rxmarijuana dot com by 85 y/o MD who's studied it 47 yrs.

Much of modern medicine is pills that do nothing, pills with dozens of side effects, pills that give people another condition so they require another prescription, pills that kill 125,000 a year in USA.

I 've had major depression maybe all my life & extreme anxiety, too. 24+ conditions Docs & pills have not fixed in 62 years. I'm on horrible pills with dozens of side effects but may be fatal to quit.

Most pills for depression don't work & may increase risk of suicide. They were designed with the never proven theory that that there's a chemical imbalance that gets corrected. Now they have a new theory that many mental illnesses are caused by undiagnosed physical problem. I need to be numb to stop my brain from getting pains signals from all over my body.

I know I would feel better with low THC, high CBD cannabis, which doesn't seem to exist anymore as street dealers thought the higher the THC, the more they can charge. The police seem to leave me with options to be in constant pain for life, & if I can't take it, suicide, or move far away to get it so I never see my family & friends again.

Then there's oncologists that get hundreds of thousands creating corpses (97% death rate for chemo, as it pretty much destroys the immune system so the cancer comes back & patient can't fight it). With killers all around us, it's hard to be relaxed. To be fair to oncologists, many say do something, anything & they got it set up that Docs lose licenses or go to prison if they offer treatments that cure many. In govt-corp alliance, many feel the need to kill, so they unite against us. Best wishes, all.

Originally Posted by kgordeeva

But what about severely depressed people? Should they be given the choice of euthanasia if they can't get over their sadness?

I think almost anyone can be treated for depression. I know that some people are really broken inside and miserable, but I don't think misery has to last forever.

Although life has a lot of challenges, it's a gift and I don't think anyone should waste it. It's possible for anyone to get even a little happiness out of life.

What do you think? Do you think some depressed people can't be cured? Have you been hopelessly depressed or known anyone who could not get over their demons? Is anyone truly hopeless and would be better off dead?

[Teckeeee]

Interesting, my buddy in Colorado has an MMJ card for ADD, and he sometimes smokes a small amount before going to work, and a lot at night to deal with racing mind/insomnia.

He tried Ritalin and other big pharma, but cannibis works better with less side effects. He is so type A it doesn't turn him into a couch potato but a more productive worker.

[Kreutz]

Most cases of depression are from a minor and easily treatable chemical imbalance. Even the more severe cases can be treated medically.

So...no.

[mbradleyc]

This site has been around for at least 8 years, yes? Threads seem to roll through pretty quickly, so I'm sure this has already been discussed. But I'm new here.

Euthanasia is complicated if anything is.

I was born into a depressed family and have been myself to varying degrees since I was about 3 years old. I have considered suicide a few times in my life but always decided it wasn't that bad. I was right, so far.

As much as I despise certain aspects of authority and the government, this is a concept that must be controlled. A functioning society cannot support institutional suicide without controls.

Imagine an irresponsible, unbalanced person deciding one day that they wanted to die and were going out in a blaze of glory, so they went on a huge shopping spree of restaurants, travel, concerts, whatever they could charge on a credit card knowing that they would never have to repay it, then got to die on the federal insurance plan. That could be very destabilizing to the economy, seriously. Insurance would go through the roof, whether it was private or government.

So government approved euthanasia needs to be considered very carefully.

I actually do approve of people with terminal, painful illnesses having that choice. But we can't just let it be available to anyone who may only be having a bad month.

That's why suicide is illegal and should remain so. There has to be a distinction or it's just legal self-murder.

Of course, an argument can be made that letting people die and murder to their hearts content will have the effect of both culling the gene pool and controlling runaway population, but I don't want to be around for that discussion.