Wendy Duffy heart breaking but understandable

[youalright]

What a brave lady i hope she's holding her son right now.

I think what should be considered is also the pain of the family members having watched her grieve and their worry and seeing her so broken. Knowing that she has made that choice may give them some relief too.

knowing that she’d probably do it her own way anyway 😢

It is this kind of thinking that enabled the many, many heartless posts on MN during lockdown that consigned the elderly, in their minds, to the dustbin, when it came to conserving health and life.

Your post would have some semblance of honesty if you'd written "my" instead of "your".

You are being obtuse to the Poster making out you don’t understand her analogy of the goldfish and dramatising “lethal injection” death

you can lose a child and still not have that pain or have different pain - only the people it happens to know whether they can carry on and have different stories and perspectives. they may well not have that level of suicidal ideation year in year out or they may do - everyone’s circumstances are different and because you have the resources to pull through doesn’t mean others can

you are trying to put a facade of “losing a child” to stop discussion and opinion

Quite agree

doing it her way in secret and never discussing it can just transfer the pain to those surviving you

How does the clinic weed out the psychopaths, or dr like Dr Shipman. As members of medical staff.

I am not being obtuse or pretending not to understand anything. The OP said she thinks people should be assisted in ending their own lives over the death of a goldfish - if my response sounded incredulous that is not the same as me being obtuse.

I am also not the one discounting anyone’s opinions. I responded to a post where you dismissed the opinions of everyone on the thread who was advocating for persevering through pain as them never having experienced anything painful enough.

I still stand by that as a general opinion - but you need to learn about nuance - nothing is fully black and white - there will always be grey

you are being obtuse acting as if op really meant it about the goldfish - again nuance - she was making the point that it’s nothing to do with her what decisions people see to be fit and meaningful - not literally suggesting a goldfish might be a reason - you took it literally

we can agree to disagree - move on 👋

I've lost many loved ones just like everyone on here and yes it hurts and its devastating but thankfully I have never lost a child but I know if I ever did it would destroy me

I think we can safely say shipman’s are very rare and these people don’t kill the people themselves - they aren’t there killing them
by injecting them - the people do it themselves through a drink that contains the necessary medication

it’s highly unlikely or almost impossible to get 5 shipman’s all working together

Maybe the core of this thread is the understanding that living is the difficult bit. Maybe we all know that and for some it’s so hard, it’s impossible.

Well said

life is tough

It ALSO takes a lot of balls to stay alive and live with the excruciating pain that grief or other life's troubles throws at us.

Absolutely two things can be true

Basically

Oh, you’re one of those ‘pets’ don’t matter people. Good to know.

So if I respond to what someone actually says instead of what you think they mean I’m being obtuse?

And if I point out it’s actually you doing the things you’re accusing me of doing you want to wave me off saying I need to learn about nuance.

Got it.

She would not qualify for assistance under the scheme put before Parliament.

She will not be "holding her son" she is dead.

it’s not for anyone on here to ridicule someone else’s beliefs or faith. If someone feels like loved ones are reunited in an afterlife once they have died, then that’s their right to believe that. I like it as an idea too.

That’s the point though - whatever it is that makes someone feel they can’t continue is a legitimate reason. It’s not for others to tell someone that they must carry on.

If someone is at the point of wanting to die anyway, why not let them do it as painlessly as possible?

It seems a lot of posters have absolutely no objection to people killing themselves, just to people going to a medical facility to be assisted.

If I got pregnant, I could choose to go to a nice clean clinic and have an abortion. So I have agency to get rid of something safely and legally that can eventually become a separate entity of its own. And that’s how it should be and we judge countries that don’t allow the same for their citizens.

Yet I don’t have that same agency over myself?

Absolutely, zero ridicule from me @EvangelicalAboutButteredToast.

Purely, a difference in belief systems.

When dealing with mental health crisis, it often is for someone else to decide whether the person in question is “of sound mind”. If someone was saying they wanted to kill themselves over the death of a goldfish, I would think those professionals (in this case, the ones who deemed Wendy Duffy “sound of mind”) would have a duty of care to the patient not to proceed to end that person’s life over a goldfish.

There are generally strict criteria laid out in handbooks which are adhered to across mental health professionals (differing across countries of course, but they all have strict guides about these things) covering all aspects of what constitutes a threat of harm to oneself or to others.

Who are we to decide? Yes, this is the problem a lot of posters are pointing out when they talk about a “slippery slope”. One day, they’re allowing a desperate person to end their life, the next they’re encouraging someone who hasn’t necessarily explored all alternatives - easier for them to administer than to try to actually help to solve a difficult problem, then maybe the next day they’re pressuring people that “aren’t contributing to society” to “lighten the load on the rest of us”. Where do we draw the line?

So heartbreaking … I lost my cherished daughter and understand completely how this lady felt as I have stood on that cliff edge before. What has stopped me is thinking of my grandsons. They have suffered enough.
I believe she will be with her son now resting in peace together.

Im a human comes before a pet person. If my house was on fire my children would be my first priority

Honestly, I'm surprised the abortion debate hasn't become a central comparison of this discussion. My body my choice, surely?