Posted by kid_A on August 8, 2001, at 10:53:39
In reply to Re: Sadness over suicides-Everyone and lissa » kid_A, posted by Simcha on August 7, 2001, at 15:32:01
> Not to be terribly argumentative....
arguments are okay, as long as no body gets too riled up! :) this is indeed, a very debate worth topic...
> Reasoning this way, yes, my mental illness is like cancer or diabetes. I need my meds to correct the very physical problems in my make-up like a diabetic needs insulin..like a cancer patient needs chemotherapy, surgery, and/or radiation.
My point is that unlike cancer or say diabetes, you won't one day wake up dead if you ignore treatment for depression. So I think we can say that depression is 'like' a disease in that certain people may be more predisposed to it than others, and that there seems to be certain actions that seem disease-like, but I still think it is a stretch, and I dont think I would be alone in the medical community, to say that depression is a disease propper.
Maybe it's for my own good, but I feel good knowing that I'm not 'diseased'... I felt sick, to be sure... even physically so, but I feel comforted in saying that I do not have a 'disease'...
As for end-stage terminal illness assisted suicide; I watched my mother wither away over a period of a year from acute lymphatic luekemia, when she wasnt in slight remission she was very sick and in a lot of pain, very scared, I think... I don't think that I would like to have thought that my mother would prefer to die on her own terms, because I'ts my mother, and I want to keep her as long as I can, but I would have done anything to end her pain in whatever way was possible, and if that meant by her own choice, then for her own good, and to honor her, and to put some end to her own personal pain, her own personal world of pain that is so very dificult for any of us to know, yes I would in the end accept her death on her own terms.
poster:kid_A
thread:8808
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/social/20010807/msgs/8933.html