On Monday’s PACOVILLA Corrections blog, Jeff ‘Paco’ Doyle discussed the high rate of suicides by correctional officers. He was right in being concerned about those self-inflicted deaths. And he was right in suggesting that correctional officers should contact their doctors for an assessment test before they reach the point where they start feeling like killing themselves. But at one point in his discussion, Paco said, “Suicide is not an act of a sane person.”
While I share Paco’s concern about the high rate of suicides among correctional officers, I must take strong exception to the thought that depression is a form of insanity. There is a marked difference between a mental illness and clinical insanity. I realize that some suicides are committed by the insane, but many are committed by people who, although mentally ill with depression, are still of sound mind and not clinically insane.
There may be good reasons why a person of sound mind would want to end his life. That is why four states – Montana, Oregon, Vermont and Washington – have legalized physician-assisted suicide.
Dr. Jack Kevorkian has been unjustly painted as a monster because he helped people whose quality of life and physical suffering had reached the point where life was no longer worth living. True, he broke the law and he paid for it, but his intentions were good, not evil.
Now for those of you who cannot see any reason for a sane person to commit suicide, why don’t you get your legislators to pass a law making suicide a capital offense.
Editor’s Note: I posted similar comments on PACOVILLA. Paco responded by saying:
“I’m not seeing where we disagree. I certainly did not mean to imply depression is insanity. However, we must all be mindful of a work and legal environment which makes little distinction. A diagnosis of clinical depression is sufficient to land on the prohibited persons list - lose a gun, lose a job. So, whatever you call it, depression has a stigma that won’t go away.”
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