Suicide

9 Pages 2357 Words

ople have to characterize suicides because a lot of times they don't understand what that person is going through so by grouping them and placing criteria on them it allows them to accept it in an easier manner.
A lot of suicides are grouped in the rational category because they are committed so the person can be saved from the pain they may be experiencing from a terminal disease. This seems to be just about the only true rational and morally correct reason why a person should commit suicide. Yet a lot of times these patients are "heavily sedated, so that it is impossible for the mental processes of decision leading to action to occur."(Brandt 123) In other words these patients have a rational reason to commit suicide, yet their mind is not capable of making that decision.
So if terminally ill patients are the only ones who have a good rational reason to commit suicide, then where does that leave everyone else? Well just about everyone else commits suicide because of a little thing that enters everyone's life at some time and that thing is called depression. Depression can come from several different things, such as a loss of something like a job, a loved one, a limb such as an arm or leg, or anything else that might be held dear to that person. Other things could be rejection at home or in the work place, abuse, and sometimes even the thought of getting old and not wanting to know what tomorrow holds in store. There are alot of arguments that these are rational reasons but just because you are having a bad day doesn't actually mean you have a rational reason to go out and throw yourself off a building or tie a rope around your neck.
Another big issue about suicide today is the one that deals with assisted suicide. When we think about this the first person who pops in our mind is Dr. Jack Kervorkian. Yet Kervorkian was not the first, "The Hemlock Society was founded by Derek Humphry, a british journalist, in Los Angeles in 1980. ...