Guest post: It is the failure to treat which is immensely cruel

Originally a comment by tigger_the_wing on What the future implications might be.

It sounds bloody awful, to be honest. It’s the ‘no co-morbidities part which has hitherto kept people alive long enough to survive the waiting list, get appropriate treatment, and go on to have a healthy life.

If you are suicidally miserable because you are in severe, intractable, possibly increasing pain from a condition which will imminently kill you, and want to die because facing further pain is pointless, then euthanasia is obviously a lot less cruel than making you wait for natural death.

However, if you are suicidally miserable solely due to a treatable mental illness or disorder, then it is the failure to treat which is immensely cruel, and killing you because you might appear to want that in the moment, because of under-funding of the resources which would restore your health, is abhorrent.

We’re seeing the same short-term thinking in the treatment of dysphoria in teens; the only difference is that the teens who undergo the appalling medical and surgical alternative to real treatment are still alive afterwards, and can sue for the abuse.

A dead person cannot sue; I don’t want to have to find out whether or not their bereaved families can.

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