Assisted suicide has ‘far-reaching implications’ for suicide prevention

Legalising assisted suicide undermines society’s long-standing commitment to ending all suicides, a Government suicide prevention advisor has warned.

Professor Louis Appleby, who chairs the National Suicide Prevention Strategy Advisory Group, told The Guardian that Kim Leadbeater’s Terminally Ill Adults Bill implies that certain suicides should be encouraged which “in every other sense we would try to prevent”.

Instead, he emphasised that society should support those given a terminal diagnosis “through that first period of shock and despair” by addressing treatable issues such as isolation and depression.

‘Enormous change’

Prof Appleby stated: “Society accepts that it has a role in protecting people who are vulnerable and at risk. We look after our friends when they’re in crisis. We sit up all night with them. We look out for strangers on a bridge.”

an enormous change with far-reaching implications

He warned: “I’m worried once you say some suicides are acceptable, some self-inflicted deaths are understandable and we actually provide the means to facilitate the self-inflicted death.

“That seems to me to be so far removed from what we currently do and from the principle that’s always guided us on despairing individuals, that it’s an enormous change with far-reaching implications.”

Depression

Earlier this month, two dozen psychiatrists warned The Times that those with suicidal thoughts could be pressured to request assisted suicide due to coercion, a major depressive disorder or a lack of palliative care.

The experts, including Professor Jonathan Cavanagh, Professor Alan Thomas and Dr Agnes Ayton, argued that “responding to these vulnerabilities” is “at the centre of suicide prevention”.

Dr Gordon Macdonald of Care Not Killing commented that their letter “highlights serious concerns from some of the UK’s most senior and respected psychiatrists who feel their profession has been ignored in this process”.