THE END OF LIFE CHOICE REFERENDUM - 2

UNDERSTANDING SUICIDE

Even though the Act itself is called End of Life Choice Act, in reality it is a law about Assisted Suicide, as in a person seeking help from a health professional to end their life. Therefore, before deciding how to vote on it, it is important to understand suicide. I will try to be very careful writing about it as I know some of my friends here have had a personal experience of losing someone very close to them through suicide. However, some understanding of suicide is necessary before one can fully understand the implications of this law.

At the risk of over-simplification, in terms of timeline, risk of suicide aka suicidality, can be divided in three different categories.

1. IMPUSLIVE SUICIDALITY
These are people who have no underlying mental illness, or even if they have an underlying mental illness, it does not present with an ongoing risk of suicide. Something happens, most often a social stressor like break-up of a relationship or loss of a job, and the person just feels that life will not get better and thinks of attempting to, or attempts to end their life. The suicide risk can go from zero to high in a matter of seconds or minutes.
On the positive side, if they survive the attempt and get a ‘cooling-off’ period in a safe environment, possibly an inpatient unit or under strict supervision by family, the suicide risk does subside in most cases.

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