suicide

Debating Assisted Suicide

/ Matthew Clemente / Leave a comment

After a brief (Spring) break, the SLACE Archive has returned. The most recent episode of the BBC’s Moral Maze radio programme, lived up to its name–tackling the vexing issue of physician assisted suicide.

Here is a description of the show from the Moral Maze website:

There are few more emotive subjects than assisted dying. It captures both the hopes and the fears of the age in which we live. Advances in medical technology have been a triumph, extending our life expectancy almost exponentially. 33% of babies born today can expect to live to 100. 80 years ago the figure would have been less than 4%. But along with the undreamt of levels of longevity have come the nightmares of a lingering death; robbed of our humanity by the indignity and pain of diseases. The government has just announced that it will give MP’s a free vote on the latest legislative attempt to allow people to get help to die and campaigners believe that decision will give the bill a strong chance of becoming law. It will allow adults to ask a doctor to help them die if they’ve been given no more than six months to live. But it won’t go as far as some campaigners would like. Why is it morally acceptable to help someone to kill themselves if they’re already close to death, but not to help someone who might have many years of pain and suffering ahead of them? And if it’s right to allow adults assisted suicide, why not children? After all is it moral to expect them to endure the suffering we would not? At the heart of this issue is personal choice and moral agency – it’s my life and my death. But is the brutal truth that in almost every circumstance we already have that choice, it’s just that we want someone else to administer the coup de gras? Or is that point? Assisted dying – a very compassionate and humane answer to help people when they are at their most desperate or a law that will in reality help only a small number, but put many more vulnerable people at risk? Chaired by Michael Buerk with Claire Fox, Anne McElvoy, Matthew Taylor, Giles Fraser.

Witnesses are Graham Winyard, Colin Harte, Gerlant van Berlaer and Ruth Dudley Edwards.

Debating Assisted Suicide

/ Matthew Clemente / Leave a comment

After a brief (Spring) break, the SLACE Archive has returned. The most recent episode of the BBC’s Moral Maze radio programme, lived up to its name–tackling the vexing issue of physician assisted suicide.

Here is a description of the show from the Moral Maze website:

There are few more emotive subjects than assisted dying. It captures both the hopes and the fears of the age in which we live. Advances in medical technology have been a triumph, extending our life expectancy almost exponentially. 33% of babies born today can expect to live to 100. 80 years ago the figure would have been less than 4%. But along with the undreamt of levels of longevity have come the nightmares of a lingering death; robbed of our humanity by the indignity and pain of diseases. The government has just announced that it will give MP’s a free vote on the latest legislative attempt to allow people to get help to die and campaigners believe that decision will give the bill a strong chance of becoming law. It will allow adults to ask a doctor to help them die if they’ve been given no more than six months to live. But it won’t go as far as some campaigners would like. Why is it morally acceptable to help someone to kill themselves if they’re already close to death, but not to help someone who might have many years of pain and suffering ahead of them? And if it’s right to allow adults assisted suicide, why not children? After all is it moral to expect them to endure the suffering we would not? At the heart of this issue is personal choice and moral agency – it’s my life and my death. But is the brutal truth that in almost every circumstance we already have that choice, it’s just that we want someone else to administer the coup de gras? Or is that point? Assisted dying – a very compassionate and humane answer to help people when they are at their most desperate or a law that will in reality help only a small number, but put many more vulnerable people at risk? Chaired by Michael Buerk with Claire Fox, Anne McElvoy, Matthew Taylor, Giles Fraser.

Witnesses are Graham Winyard, Colin Harte, Gerlant van Berlaer and Ruth Dudley Edwards.

Veteran Suicide: Can Policy Solve the Problem?

/ Christopher Moritt / Leave a comment

A few weeks ago I wrote about the growing problem of veteran suicide. I have since been asked to follow up and talk about ways in which the problem could be solved and the policies that are in place to help struggling vets. I have done a little bit more research and have found some interesting facts about vet suicide. According to a VA study vets are killing themselves at a rate of 22 per day, which equates to 8,000 deaths a year. Around 69 percent of these suicides are individuals over the age of 50, a statistic that surprised me at first read. What this tells us is, as our older veterans begin to age, the problems associated with their service do not simply go away. As the combat winds down in Afghanistan and with operations finished in Iraq the veteran population is going to continue to rise as incentives to stay active start to dwindle we will soon be dealing with much larger group of people, many of whom may suffer from mental problems.

 
The question obviously becomes “what to we do about it?” As I write this, I find myself thinking I am not sure there is a policy directive or program that can really make progress. Many programs are already in place. The VA has health clinics and a 24-hour hotline that is designed for veterans to be able to call and work through their problems. Stop Soldier Suicide (SSS) is a veteran-led nonprofit with a mission of reducing vet suicide. There are many of these organizations all throughout the country. SSS believes one of the major problems is identifying the actual reasons for suicidal thoughts. These reasons run the entire spectrum of emotional issues from disability, depression, joblessness, and PTSD. The problem with identifying these issues is one must first have a chance to evaluate the veteran, which means they (the veteran) actually have to call and ask for help. When vets seek mental help from the VA they can wait an average of 50 days before receiving treatment, which may be just too long to wait. Such is the case with many VA services; there are just simply too many veterans and not enough providers for care to be rendered quickly. One step the VA has taken to help with this problem is the added chat and text functions to the Veteran Crisis Line system which may aid in helping some vets talk out problems before its too late.

 
As I mentioned in my previous post about suicide I know several Marines that I served with who chose to end their own life. Some of these guys I knew pretty well, others not as much. But I cannot name a single reason why any of them actually followed through an committed suicide, which is perhaps why coming up with policies for prevention is almost impossible.

 
Some ideas include throwing money at the problem through congressional bills and legislation designed to help the VA and other programs. I am not going to sit here and say that’s not going to help; I just can’t reason exactly how it will. Another solution is to encourage more people to get involved but again, when a crisis line has answered nearly a million calls since 2007 adding a couple more phone lines isn’t going to make a huge of impact either. One of the better solutions is to do everything we can to reduce the stigma associated with asking for help. In the military and particularly the infantry feeling sad or depressed is a sign of weakness. We have an annual safety briefing in which we talk about suicide but most of us laugh it off and wait for our commander to release us for the weekend. When I was getting out we had to go through a program talking about the transition from military life to civilian life, but one thing that might have been helpful for those struggling is mandatory counseling session prior to leaving active service. Granted, having to this would have made me mad and wasted my time, but if there is a chance that a young military person can have some issues identified before they become civilians it might just be worth it.

 
For some further reading the Huffington Post has an ongoing series called “Invisible Casualties” that is worth checking out; this series will explain these issues with much more depth.

Veterans and Suicide, an Unsolvable Problem ?

/ Christopher Moritt / Leave a comment

Well the shut down is over, meaning all the doom and gloom that would have affected the veteran community did not happen. As of a few days ago, the VA website announced it would be resuming normal operations.
While looking for something to write about this week, I stumbled upon a fairly old announcement on the VA website; September was Suicide Prevention Month. For those that are unaware suicide is a major problem for the veteran community particularly with large numbers of vets coming home after having sustained both physical and mental losses.

To combat this problem there are prevention coordinators at all 151 VA medical centers and a hotline people can call when they feel they need help. Typically when someone talks about veteran suicide, PTSD is inevitably mentioned. This of course is for good reason as depression can be a symptom in someone suffering from PTSD, but I have always believed there is more to it than that.
I got out of the Marine Corps in 2009, each year since then someone I served with has committed suicide. Some of them were pretty good friends; others I only knew in passing. In the military, and especially the infantry units, the bond between brothers-in-arms is close. One guy who committed suicide, I think I only spoke to once or twice, but it still stung. The reason it stings is because, I would argue, the hard part is over. These vets have made it through enemy fire, IED’s , and all the other stuff that can kill you in Iraq or Afghanistan and yet they come home can cannot cope.
I am not going to get into deep medical or psychological evidence as to why any of this happens because, quite frankly, I am not convinced the experts even know much about the problem. What I do know is that for those of us who have been in combat, life back home is often not the same. A young infantryman returning home often finds friends have either moved away or are not the same people they were when you left. Wives and girlfriends in some cases are also not there anymore, and it can be difficult if they are getting used to being around them again. A friend of mine got drunk and angry because his wife wouldn’t let him hold his child. He promptly killed himself with a pistol. Nobody that knows him really knows why. He just did. There is no policy that can be put in place to prevent that. Out of all the people I know who have committed suicide, not one of them asked for help from their loved ones. To my knowledge none of them called a help line at the VA. Each year I was in the Marines I sat through hours of mandatory depression and suicide prevention classes designed to make us aware of the emotional problems that befall so many.
War is difficult, being in the military is difficult, and life after can be even more difficult. These are just facts of life. The solution is not an easy one. For those of us where depression is not an issue, all we can do is wait for the call for help, look for the signs, and hope our friends come out OK.