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rfmcdonaldThe recent death of Charles Fariala, a 36 year old Montrealer suffering from multiple sclerosis who committed suicide following a worsening of his disease, has focused attention on assisted suicide in Canada since his mother, Marielle Houle, has been charged with helping him kill himself. Fariala's death has a certain measure of irony, given how he composed, with his former girlfriend Dulcinea Langfelder, the play Victoria, which had as its central theme the possibility of enjoying life even in extremity. In the Toronto Star, however, Langfelder is quoted as saying that Fariala's decision to commit suicide wasn't inconsistent with his philosophy.
Michael Valpy, writing in The Globe and Mail, explored how common clinical depression is among many sufferers of degenerative diseases, including multiple sclerosis, and the possibility that this mental state can bias the decision-making process.
Of course, not all depressions are the same. More importantly, It's quite possible, I'd think, to be depressed at learning that one has a medical condition which will progressively and unstoppably worsen over time, to strongly fear and resent the impact that this deterioration will have on your sense of comfort with your self, for this fear and resentment to be motivated by depression, and yet for the decision to end one's life to be entirely sensible. In some circumstances, depression is an entirely natural outcome; it's positively unnatural to expect people to be happy all of the time, least not with certainly grim outcomes.
And yet. In a critical survey of the Netherlands' assisted suicide policy, Herbert Hendin discussed the disturbing case of Netty Boomsma, a depressed Dutchwoman who calmly and consistently her doctor to help her kill herself, after her younger son committed suicide some years following the accidental death of her elder son. He makes the good point that in a society where assisted suicide is accepted, people who face serious life challenges and are trapped in apparently intractable depression will be more likely than not to seek out assisted suicide, criticizing her psychologists for not considering alternative treatments for her profound depression apart from a head-on confrontation with her grief over the death of her children. Speaking from my own personal experiences, seemingly intractable personal issues are rarely solved by head-on confrontation; sometimes, things must unexpectedly impinge from the outside, or one's own thoughts must undergo sudden phase shifts.
I won't come to a conclusion on assisted suicide, in this post or in the next couple of years. One might as well ask me to come to a definitive conclusion on abortion. Case-by-case considerations must be made. It's ad hoc, but what else can one conscientiously do?
"Charles himself was against legalizing euthanasia (the taking of a life without a patient's consent)," she said. "He worked as an orderly, and he knew that if euthanasia was legal, scores of people would just disappear. But this was not euthanasia; it was his decision. If I was his mother, and he asked me to assist in his suicide, how could I not do that? I think it would actually be sadistic to refuse him.
"Victoria is about dying with grace," she added. "That's what Charles did. He wanted to die in his mother's arms. He wanted to die peacefully. And that's what he did."
Michael Valpy, writing in The Globe and Mail, explored how common clinical depression is among many sufferers of degenerative diseases, including multiple sclerosis, and the possibility that this mental state can bias the decision-making process.
Deanna Groetzinger, a spokeswoman for the Multiple Sclerosis Society of Canada, said many people with the disease are severely disabled but "wonderfully active and wonderfully productive. The question I would raise is, was it MS that was affecting this person?"
There is, she said, a known link to depression. "But we know the depression can be treated."
If Mr. Fariala was experiencing untreated depression, was he capable of giving rational consent to having help ending his life?
Of course, not all depressions are the same. More importantly, It's quite possible, I'd think, to be depressed at learning that one has a medical condition which will progressively and unstoppably worsen over time, to strongly fear and resent the impact that this deterioration will have on your sense of comfort with your self, for this fear and resentment to be motivated by depression, and yet for the decision to end one's life to be entirely sensible. In some circumstances, depression is an entirely natural outcome; it's positively unnatural to expect people to be happy all of the time, least not with certainly grim outcomes.
And yet. In a critical survey of the Netherlands' assisted suicide policy, Herbert Hendin discussed the disturbing case of Netty Boomsma, a depressed Dutchwoman who calmly and consistently her doctor to help her kill herself, after her younger son committed suicide some years following the accidental death of her elder son. He makes the good point that in a society where assisted suicide is accepted, people who face serious life challenges and are trapped in apparently intractable depression will be more likely than not to seek out assisted suicide, criticizing her psychologists for not considering alternative treatments for her profound depression apart from a head-on confrontation with her grief over the death of her children. Speaking from my own personal experiences, seemingly intractable personal issues are rarely solved by head-on confrontation; sometimes, things must unexpectedly impinge from the outside, or one's own thoughts must undergo sudden phase shifts.
I won't come to a conclusion on assisted suicide, in this post or in the next couple of years. One might as well ask me to come to a definitive conclusion on abortion. Case-by-case considerations must be made. It's ad hoc, but what else can one conscientiously do?
