Friday, October 19, 2018

Suicide Prohibitions

Some people do believe that there is no point to living on Earth. I don't.

The point of living is to enjoy living, and to benefit self and others.

It will be good if we can reduce suicides to zero using persuasion, reason, and kindness. Suicide should be respected as a civil and human right for all adults when it is done in private. Nonconsensual psychiatry should be outlawed. That is, psychiatric coercion, force, and confinement should be outlawed.

Psychiatry wrongly medicalizes suicide. The decision of suicide is not a medical issue. It is a personal, moral, and ethical issue and decision.

Suicide prohibitions and the ability for psychiatrists to lock up law abiding citizens for trying to engage in suicide or for indicating that they will has a chilling effect on free speech, and prevents people from being able to have open and honest conversations about suicide in private in appropriate settings. This needs to change.

Read the book Suicide Prohibition: The Shame of Medicine by psychiatrist Thomas Szasz.