“Doctor-assisted suicide for the chronically mentally ill is currently legal in the Netherlands, Belgium and Switzerland, despite being one of the most contentious points in the ongoing right-to-die debate. Letting You Go follows one such Dutch patient, 27-year-old Sanne, who, after nearly a decade of pursuing treatments for her chronic depression, insomnia and borderline personality disorder, has chosen to end her suffering and pursue a planned death. While clearly shaken, Sanne’s father has made the difficult decision to stand by his daughter’s choice, reasoning ‘she couldn’t, and shouldn’t, do this alone’. Unflinching, honest and humane, the Dutch director Kim Faber’s film is both a moving portrait of father and daughter, and an intimate look at one of the most controversial medical ethics issues of our times. The film played at the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (IDFA) in 2014 and AFI DOCS film festival in 2015.”
This is the scenario I’m concerned about. Should we simply support the wishes of anyone who wants to die? Is this the “slippery slope” that critics of physician assisted death have noted? Do you have comments after watching this hard to watch video?
I wasn’t going to watch, but I toughed it out. To not acknowledge these stories may help some folks, but isn’t it better that we face up them?
Hmm. Just what my mother always advised: Whatever it is, face up to it. Well, except that I wasn’t to “face up to” whatever it was she didn’t want to talk about. And with that in mind, I guess the best thing we can do for someone is to listen to them. Even if we don’t want to hear it. Still, it’s too bad people can hold totally contradictory ideas in their minds at the same time.
Many of us have heard, in the pop psychology of the day, that, ultimately, suicides can not be prevented. If someone wants to, they’ll find a way.
I wish her doctors had been interviewed. Did she try (was she offered) every possible medication? It’s hard to believe nothing helped enough. It would seem she needed a mother in her life. At least she had one parent’s love and understanding at the end. Their relationship appeared to be quite solid. And the interviewer was likely supportive. Where on earth were all the professionals who could have been what the daughter and father needed: “more adults in the room”? Hiding out lest they be held liable. Right?
An interesting op-ed in the New York Times today: Going Beyond ‘Do No harm’.
The writer, a cardiologist in North Carolina, cites data from Oregon, which passed a Death with Dignity Act. The evidence cited supports the benefit to terminally ill patients when they have some control over the means by which they die.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/05/opinion/on-assisted-suicide-going-beyond-do-no-harm.html?_r=0
Sanne was not terminally ill, as far as we know. And she was not writhing in pain. (In fact, we see her sitting in a dark room, presumably at night, on her laptop. Such exposure to blue-light, within three hours before bedtime, is off-limits to people who have trouble sleeping.) The father and daughter regretted aloud on film that her doctor was not responsive to her concerns. This was an instance of the Hippocratic Oath applied in reverse – the doctor’s non-participation harmed them.
It’s a good editorial, Sanne’s case representing a different aspect of the larger issue.
Of course the doctor is not present in the video to defend themself.
That dangling reference to the doctor in the final sentence is an editorial Oops. It was part of a thought which got lost in a deletion.