Traditionally, someone who had swallowed a bottle of sleeping pills would be diagnosed with a mental disorder, like depression. And opponents of physician assisted suicide say the same diagnosis should apply to terminally ill people. Psychiatrist Greg Hamilton heads physicians for compassionate care, a group that opposes the Oregon Death with Dignity Act. He didn't know Joan Lucas. But he says there's no such thing as a rational suicide.
People can sound reasonable when they are thinking about suicide.
But suicidality is still a symptom, a problem. We need to find out why the person is so distress and diagnose the causes of that distress, and to treat those causes, not to be quibbling over how reasonable are they or aren't they. But other mental health experts say an ALS patient on her deathbed is very different from a desperate stockbroker standing on a window ledge. Doctor Tony Farencoff is a Portland psychologist, who helped write a medical guidebook to the assisted suicide law. That does not mean the person is irrational or depressed at all.