{"id":4351,"date":"2015-10-24T15:19:44","date_gmt":"2015-10-24T20:19:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/jenniferfitz\/?p=4351"},"modified":"2015-10-24T15:19:44","modified_gmt":"2015-10-24T20:19:44","slug":"state-mandates-killing-of-mentally-ill-patients","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/jenniferfitz\/2015\/10\/state-mandates-killing-of-mentally-ill-patients\/","title":{"rendered":"State Mandates Killing of Mentally Ill Patients"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

No no, I\u2019ve got that headline wrong. \u00a0It\u2019s all about \u201cdignity\u201d when you tell a mentally-ill person<\/a>, \u201cWhy yes, we would all be better off without you, thanks for asking.\u201d \u00a0Nothing confers more dignity on a suffering person than affirming for them that in fact you\u2019d rather get rid of them, too.<\/p>\n

But no one\u2019s making anyone kill their neighbor with this kindness, are they? On the contrary: If you\u2019re a doctor in\u00a0Quebec<\/a>, you\u2019ll be expected to kill patients regardless of your personal (or medical) opinion on the matter. \u00a0In the\u00a0Netherlands<\/a>, you can be sued for failing to carry out the suicide your patient has requested from you.<\/p>\n

These are civilized, western, democratic countries, and physicians are being required by law to kill their depressed patients.<\/p>\n

The case in the Netherlands is revealing: When the doctor changed her mind and withdrew her opinion that her young\u00a0patient should be euthanized rather than treated for depression and physical pain, the patient killed herself. \u00a0It is a case, here, not of an ethic of life and death, but of pleasantness<\/a>. \u00a0The parents are suing because they were thus forced to discover the hard reality of a child with a death wish in all its ugliness, rather than getting a nice, tidy, no-fuss-no-muss quiet passing at the death bed. \u00a0In other words: They got exactly what they were requesting, but it wasn\u2019t done in a way that let them ignore the truth about their daughter\u2019s suicidal depression.<\/p>\n

One has to wonder what it\u2019s like to suffer from a debilitating illness when your parents are primarily concerned not with your life or well-being, but with the assurance that you\u2019ll off yourself without ruining their garden.<\/p>\n

Mental illness is difficult.\u00a0<\/strong>The person who suffers from it feels alone, disoriented, useless, and worthless. \u00a0It is difficult for the friends and family standing by, because the mentally ill don\u2019t make life easy. \u00a0At best, it\u2019s emotionally draining. \u00a0Often the sufferer lives from disaster to disaster, with no neat fix that makes everything all better by the end of the after-school special.<\/p>\n

None of this changes the inherent dignity and worth of the person so afflicted. \u00a0None of this turns the patient into a disposable human, unworthy of life. \u00a0Our mission towards our unavoidably suffering neighbor isn\u2019t to eliminate the neighbor, but to share in his suffering.<\/p>\n

Physicians who don\u2019t give up on their patients, who continue to look for ways to alleviate their patients\u2019 suffering even when things seem most bleak, these are not criminals, they are heroes.<\/p>\n

Way back before all this came to full fruit, Douglas Adams had a gag in the US edition of Life, the Universe, and Everything<\/em>\u00a0about the use of the word \u201cBelgium.\u201d<\/a>:<\/p>\n

The book is the only one in the Hitchhiker\u2019s Guide to the Galaxy series to have been censored in its US edition.<\/span>[4]<\/a><\/sup>\u00a0The word \u201casshole\u201d is replaced with the word \u201ckneebiter\u201d, and the word \u201cshit\u201d is replaced with \u201cswut\u201d. Possibly the most famous example of censorship is in Chapter 22, in which the UK edition mentions that the \u201cRory\u201d is an award for \u201cThe Most Gratuitous Use of the Word \u2018<\/span>Fuck\u2018 in a Serious Screenplay.\u201d In the US edition, this was changed to \u201cBelgium\u201d and the text from the original radio series described \u201cBelgium\u201d as the most offensive word used in the galaxy.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The censored version was, as a result, quite a bit funnier than the original. \u00a0Now that Belgium is a world leader<\/a> in the art of killing its own citizens, one finds the novel disturbingly prophetic.<\/p>\n

\"File:Edouard<\/p>\n

Artwork: Edouard Manet, The Suicide, [Public Domain]\u00a0via Wikimedia<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

No no, I\u2019ve got that headline wrong. \u00a0It\u2019s all about \u201cdignity\u201d when you tell a mentally-ill person, \u201cWhy yes, we would all be better off without you, thanks for asking.\u201d \u00a0Nothing confers more dignity on a suffering person than affirming for them that in fact you\u2019d rather get rid of them, too. But no one\u2019s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1209,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[162,6,29],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4351","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-human-rights","category-stick-that-corner","category-suffering"],"yoast_head":"\nState Mandates Killing of Mentally Ill Patients<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"No no, I've got that headline wrong. \u00a0It's all about "dignity" when you tell a mentally-ill person, "Why yes, we would all be better off without you,\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/jenniferfitz\/2015\/10\/state-mandates-killing-of-mentally-ill-patients\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta 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