Wendy Duffy heart breaking but understandable

[youalright]

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

So sorry to hear that, so sorry. Everyone i know who has been in your positi9n has suffered for years with all the what ifs and unanswered questions

well you are definitely someone to make a valuable contribution (remember we must make them!)

as the poster you replied to, i agree, her family are fine and understand her decision and support her - i haven’t read anywhere they are In the state this poster is prophising

So you're trying to tell me that a woman who is so stricken with grief, four years after the death of her son that she has no joy in life, feels numb, and is just waiting to die, isn't depressed?

Depression is feeling down for insufficient reason, not feeling down because your life is genuinely too hard work to you for being alive to balance how much effort it is.

Professionals in the UK and in Switzerland have come to the conclusion that she is rationally unable to find sufficient reward in life to make her life worth the effort to her. Who do you think you are to dispute that?

Considering one of the most well-known clinics wouldn't sign off on it, and she had to go to another,

The clinic you are taking about, Dignitas, takes only physical health cases, they did not turn her down, she could not even apply to them.

It may surprise you to read that I am very disturbed about this case, and believe that Pegasos do give people a subconscious "permission" to die that may actually encourage them to do so.

But your combative attitude on this thread, including a post you made to me that I see was deleted my MN before I could read it, has almost been enough to make me change my mind.

Depression is literally just: 'A state of unhappiness or despondency'. So yes, she was depressed. Clinically? Well, what criteria do you use? I struggle to believe that she wasn't clinically depressed, frankly.

And no, I haven't contradicted myself. She was sad and wanted to die, only four years after the tragic death of a child, so paid someone to facilitate her suicide, and people are in fact praising it as brave, and the right choice to make.

As I've said, I can only assume you would think that a young mother with PND, or a man who has lost his girlfriend and feels he can't go on several years later, should have the same right as her. That sits very uneasily with me.

Clinically depressed? Perhaps not. But she most certainly was depressed, in the classic emotional sense, and displaying all the symptoms of depression.

Combative? I've just been putting forward my opinion, the same as anyone else.

At the end of the day, my opinion is simply that I think it is dangerous and dystopian to normalise assisted suicide for sadness, and that given social contagion, this publicity and positive take on it, will likely have the knock-on effect of causing more people to kill themselves rather than engage with treatment, and hopefully get better.

And you're the one who called me judgemental. All I said (I'm not sure why Mumsnet deleted it) was that yes, I do judge someone who makes comments that encourage suicidal ideation by painting suicide as a positive, or 'the right choice'. Which actually isn't a controversial opinion.