NEWS: Ultimate Cure for Depression?

CULTURE: Ultimate Cure for Depression?

Stressed? Depressed? Suffering From Life?

Dutch doctors have a cure, but some people might think it is a bit extreme.

Some people think we rely too much on medication, but I hope they don't think this is a good idea.

:Nigel Powers voice: Only the Dutch..........

Clockwork Orangina. Soylent Karmic Energy.

If you're old and can't get laid any more...

Planet's getting full ass.

why not? why exactly isn't this a good idea?

This is what comes from walking on a slippery slope.

or a razor's edge.

I was going to jokingly reply to whatever the Dutch were doing with, "Well euthanasia cures everything!" Boy was I surpised.

the first episode of futurama had it right on the money. won't be long before there's a suicide booth on every corner.


but these ones probably won't feature world's sexiest pin-ups, natch.

[Edited on Dec 18, 2004 2:40AM]

i'm in favour, i'm not saying we should put every lovesick teen down but there isn't exactly a shortage of people in the world, why drag some really tired and depressed person through life at great emotional and financial cost if he doesn't even want to.

i say if they're really tired of live (which i can imagine perfectly well) then sure, why not help them put a end to it in a clean, simple way.
the other day some guy in my country was just standing around waiting for the train to arrive when some suicider ran past him and jumped straight into a intercity train passing at high speed, the corpse got flung back onto the waiting guy injuring his back and breaking his leg.
sounds a lot less messy than just going to a psych evaluation and being put to sleep.

need population control, might as well whack those that don't want to be here.

Agreed, we do need population control, but the answer isn't to bump off thepeople who are tired of living, if they're suffering from an incurable disease and don't want to live then that's fine, but people who are 'tired of life', and by that i interpret peoples who are depressed, should address that issue andnot kill themselves.

...or they could just figure out life is what it is, and it's not perfect, but you can look at some of the good things, stop bitching about how everything isn't working out the way you had planed it all in your head, and just shut up and live life-

oh boy, there i go talkin' "crazy talk" again...

It was only a matter of time, I said until doctors would diagnose life itself as a disease. And now it has happened.
"You are suffering from chronic life, sir. It's a disease, sometimes incurable. Let us help you, here are some drugs, that will certafiable KILL YOU." You know what, that may seem extreme, but it is symbolic for wha tthe pharmaceutical companies and "alopathic" medecine have been doing all alone.

There are some really important people in the history of the world who were tired of living before they did anything important. What if there are other people who are going through a serious down spell and they don't even make an effort to make it through because this service exists?

yes but why do those things, imagine you're 38 years old, crappy job, no decent education, shitty situation with no friends or partner, basically all you got to look forward to is another 20 years scraping by on shit jobs, sitting at home alone and then going demented in a retirement home for the rest of your life.

it's bullshit that everyone has their own life in hand they can totally change it if they just want to, sometimes your situation is just fucked with not much hope of things getting better so why go through the depressing drag of living it out if you don't want to.
i don't believe in any kind of afterlife, death is just the end of being so i don't think it's that bad to kill yourself, if you got a ton of loving friends and family around then yeah but if you're alone, who cares it's not like you'll be around to have to deal with consequences if you're dead.

no way, the pharmaceutical gover ...er companies will never let that happen, they need to keep people sick and alive for as long as possible.

It depends on the definition of "tired of life". Sure, there are a few people who don't mind if they die soon, and really aren't interested in living too long. Those people aren't in any normal use of the word "depressed" or "suicidal". There are also a few people who have no sucess with any treatment for depression, and who go through years of various medications and therapies with no luck. They might try ECT, sometimes this works for people, but not always. So, if someone has tried everything and *still* wants to die, well, maybe. But it seems to me that very many people go through these feelings temporarily, and that it would be better for society if 'we' could work out better cures and better preventative treatments.

Ok, so some guy who works a shitty job goes and kills himself, someone needs to take his job, oh wait, now THIS GUY wants to kill himself. Sooner all later all people qualified for the shitty job have gone and killed themselves, but that job still needs to be done. This will create a vacuum in society. Go and make some friends, join a book club, or come and get a subscription on this website

No it's not; i couldn't even get a job as a shelf stcker in a supermarket, and now four years later i've turned myself around and had a good job in a respected chain of suit stores, and have since then quit that to go to the top school of computer science in the country.

Again, life is what you make of it.

that type of "no one cares" attitude is self pitying: shape up, put on a clean shirt and go and meet people. And having loving friends and family around you is no guarantee that you won't try to commit suicide. Trust me, i know.

[Edited on Dec 18, 2004 11:39AM]

i don't mean to be uncaring but people look at death as if it's some kind of horrible fate that has to be avoided at all cost.
yeah if you have a lot of people that care about you it's pretty cheap to go out and kill yourself leaving that mess behind but really, if you're alone and you're not going to hurt anyone by dying.
if you're dead, you're dead, nothings gonna bother you and if you do it in a controlled way that let's you wrap up your business in life first i don't see why not.

"Death solves all problems, no man no problem."
-Stalin

it wasn't really meant to apply to this and stalin was kind of a asshole but it's still true.
the thing about death is that it's final, it's not like anyone is going to say something like aw shit man, i really wish i hadn't killed myself.

I agree with this bit. Sometimes it's best to just let people die.

This is the bit that I find worrying. I'd like a nicer world where people had friends and didn't live shitty lives doing shitty jobs on their own.

Well, no. But we{tinw} could be killing all sorts of people, maybe a genius artist?

see you're allready calling it killing, it's not killing if someone wants to die.
i see it as someone excersizing their controll over their own life, they can jump off buildings or in front of trains but that leaves a big mess, traumatized people and sometimes goes horribly wrong, euthanasia is a controlled way of ending your own life, it's not a voluntary murder or something like that.

a genius or artist that wants to die isn't going to be very productive, it's not like i'm saying anyone in a bad mood should go end their lifes but someone that seriously looks as his own life as some kind of dragging experience that he's forced to go through, i think it's selfish rather than noble to stop them.
if they're clear minded, rational and certain why not.

i should probably add at this point that i realise that there's a huge gray area here, i'd probably be a lot less in favour if it's someone close to me that suddenly decides to go through with something like that. (which happened to me twice now, luckily both survived through chance)
i just mean that in some (rather extreme) circumstances it can be very justifiable i think.

[Edited on Dec 18, 2004 by Snottlebocket]

I'd sign up for testing.

There are some who are beyond repair ... and depression can manifest physically as well as emotionally. Unless you've been through it, you'll never understand it. That's not to say I agree with off-ing yourself, but I can understand why people (living with severe depression) would want to.

Snottlebocket is right, although I don't think quoting Stalin is a very persuasive tactic. People who say "what if wanting to die was just temporary and they turned it around later" are making a thought error: the person will be dead later, so they won't be disappointed.

The bit about, "what if the person were a genius, destined to do something great later" is an argument about potential benefits for others, not the person in question. It also suffers from the same fallacy as above: if the person really wants to die, he/she is not the genius who does something great later, they are the one who kills themself soon and does nothing later.

It's all about autonomy. If you really believe in it, restricting people from killing themselves is wrong, not to mention absurd... legal obstacles only make it more difficult, causing the suicidal person and others more suffering and trauma..

Like S says, if the person doesn't have meaningful social connections, no one really cares anyway, except moralists who pay lip service and see them as an abstraction... unless these people are doing something real for suicidal individuals in their daily lives, I'm not buying it.

If one uses suicide as a cowardly escape and causes people who care to suffer by the act, they may be (have been) an asshole, but it's not illegal to be an asshole. One could accomplish essentially the same thing by covertly moving away and severing contact with those people... should the government prevent people from doing this too?