Suicide Promotion During Suicide Prevention Week – Blog from Wesley Smith and a Little More from Me

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Wesley Smith posted his own follow-up to yesterday’s post  –  I discussed how there seems to be an awful lot of news dedicated to the promotion of suicide during the so-called “National Suicide Prevention Week.”

It’s been obvious to a number of us who’ve been dealing with these issues that the suicide prevention community has been MIA for years.  It’s gotten to the point where I doubt that reporters even think – on their own – to call someone from a suicide prevention organization when doing a story on, for example, Final Exit Network (FEN) – the vigilante, assisted suicide cult.

Wesley’s been in this fight a long time – somewhat longer than me, in fact.  You should read his further thoughts on this particular phenomenon if you’re interested in it.  And I don’t just say that because he’s linked to yesterday’s post and quoted from it.  😉

I’ll have a bit more to add at the end of this post, but here’s the intro to Wesley’s post, Invisible Suicide Prevention Week:

When I was practicing law full time from the mid 1970s into the 1980s, there was tremendous on emphasis suicide prevention.  Hotlines proliferated, anti suicide billboards were ubiquitous, and a great deal of attention was paid to the issue throughout society.

Then, the assisted suicide movement began arguing that some suicides were good.  The corrosive effect of the movement, among other factors, has enervated the suicide prevention movement, to the point that when someone sent me a suicide threat on email several years ago, I couldn’t find a prevention center to help him in his area code!  

And now, Suicide Prevention Week has come and almost gone, without making a sound.

I realized last night that I wasn’t entirely accurate when I said that suicide prevention groups and/or their representatives have been totally absent from this debate.

In June, 2010, a reporter for a San Francisco online news site managed to get reactions from two professionals connected to organizations that seek to prevent and reduce the number of suicides in the US.  In that story, the reporter somehow managed to get Lanny Berman, president of the International Association of Suicide Prevention to condemn billboards being put up by FEN across the country that promote suicide:

“This is irresponsible and downright dangerous; it is the equivalent of handing a gun to someone who is suicidal,” wrote Lanny Berman, president of the International Association of Suicide Prevention, in an email. “This message, communicated to thousands of vulnerable individuals, suffering from psychic and or physical pain that is treatable, invites a tragic and final solution to problems that most often can be solved with proper evaluation and treatment.”

“This is irresponsible and downright dangerous; it is the equivalent of handing a gun to someone who is suicidal,” wrote Lanny Berman, president of the International Association of Suicide Prevention, in an email. “This message, communicated to thousands of vulnerable individuals, suffering from psychic and or physical pain that is treatable, invites a tragic and final solution to problems that most often can be solved with proper evaluation and treatment.”

“This is irresponsible and downright dangerous; it is the equivalent of handing a gun to someone who is suicidal,” wrote Lanny Berman, president of the International Association of Suicide Prevention, in an email. “This message, communicated to thousands of vulnerable individuals, suffering from psychic and or physical pain that is treatable, invites a tragic and final solution to problems that most often can be solved with proper evaluation and treatment.”

A Deputy Director of a San Francisco organization expressed similar sentiments, which you can read by checking the link above.

Don’t be cheered by that, though.  I was, briefly.  To my knowledge, that was the first and last time Lanny Berman ever weighed in on anything assisted suicide proponents have done.  And it’s the only time in the last few years that any real criticism was voiced in the handful of instances they were included in a story, the message was more like this one, voiced by a psychologist who was – maybe still is – on the board of the Society for the Prevention of Teen Suicide.  Here’s a quote from here about the suicide promotion billboards from a previous post:

But Springer says she’s not opposed to Final Exit’s mission, just how they’re delivering the message.
“I visited the website and it’s populated by elderly folks who are at the end of a very long life and are in pain,” she said. “That’s a whole different issue to me.”

What you just read was a suicide prevention professional throwing elderly people under the bus.  But we already knew that.

Mostly, I want to break the silence of the suicide prevention organizations.  But part of me is really concerned that when and if they do break their silence it will be to do what the Ms. Springer above did – throw old, ill and disabled people under the bus.

But if that happens, at least we’ll know how little our lives are valued by the so-called mental health community.  To me, knowledge is better than guessing.  –Stephen Drake

“This is irresponsible and downright dangerous; it is the equivalent of handing a gun to someone who is suicidal,” wrote Lanny Berman, president of the International Association of Suicide Prevention, in an email. “This message, communicated to thousands of vulnerable individuals, suffering from psychic and or physical pain that is treatable, invites a tragic and final solution to problems that most often can be solved with proper evaluation and treatment.”

“This is irresponsible and downright dangerous; it is the equivalent of handing a gun to someone who is suicidal,” wrote Lanny Berman, president of the International Association of Suicide Prevention, in an email. “This message, communicated to thousands of vulnerable individuals, suffering from psychic and or physical pain that is treatable, invites a tragic and final solution to problems that most often can be solved with proper evaluation and treatment.”

“This is irresponsible and downright dangerous; it is the equivalent of handing a gun to someone who is suicidal,” wrote Lanny Berman, president of the International Association of Suicide Prevention, in an email. “This message, communicated to thousands of vulnerable individuals, suffering from psychic and or physical pain that is treatable, invites a tragic and final solution to problems that most often can be solved with proper evaluation and treatment.”

Why is there so much suicide promotion during National Suicide Prevention Week?

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You’d never know it’s National Suicide Prevention Week (Sept. 4 – 10), or that Saturday, Sept. 10th is World Suicide Prevention Day.  But then again, as I’ve written before, it’s been increasingly clear that the Suicide Prevention Community has washed its hands of old, ill and disabled people – and surrendered at risk individuals in those groups to suicide and euthanasia advocacy groups.

If that seems a little extreme and overblown, you’ll have to excuse me.  The week has, from my somewhat skewed vantage, been dominated by suicide news – but not by news dealing with prevention.

For example, yesterday Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley certified an initiative petition for the “Death with Dignity Act” (aka “make assisted suicide legal act”).  We’ll write more about that later, but the certification allows the petitioners to gather signatures; if successful in meeting the quota, the initiative goes before the legislature.  If the legislature fails to adopt the measure as legislation, the petitioners need to gather more signatures in order to put the initiative on the 2012 ballot to be decided by voters. (h/t to Margaret Dore)

Yesterday – September 7th – also saw the publication of a new message from Barbara Coombs Lee on the Compassion & Choices/Conflation & Con Jobs blog.

I’m going to translate liberally here, but Ms. Coombs Lee says that after 14 years (while C & C was controlling the information available about the actual practice of assisted suicide in Oregon, spin-doctoring any unfavorable events, making sure that reporters and film makers have access to the shiningest examples of loving families who went through the “death with dignity process,” and keeping media away from the less than shining examples), they have been successful in achieving a 77% approval rate for the law in Oregon.  And this was in spite of the observation by editors of The Oregonian that:

Oregon’s physician-assisted suicide program has not been sufficiently transparent. Essentially, a coterie of insiders run the program, with a handful of doctors and others deciding what the public may know. We’re aware of no substantiated abuses, but we’d feel more confident with more sunlight on the program. (Emphasis added.) See this link for a full discussion.

 The point, though, of this message is that there is one thing that will be changing in their advocacy from now on – the limited amount of documentation that has been required of physicians under the Oregon law is seen as too burdensome by those professionals.  So from now on, advocacy efforts won’t be pushing for even the illusion of accountability the previous statute includes.  Charming.  And predictable.  Removing the burden of even token accountability will bring more doctors on board.  Coombs Lee is right about that.  As I said, I’ve taken some liberties with my own translation here, so please go ahead and read this fascinating warning shot from Coombs Lee here.  (h/t Kathi Hamlon)

That’s how my experience with major news during Suicide Prevention Week here in the US has gone.

So, some of you might wonder how things are shaping up for World Suicide Prevention Day…

First, there’s the news in the UK that at least 10% of suicides in Britain are linked to terminal or chronic illness and account for over 400 deaths every year, according to this report by the DEMOS think tank in the UK.  Accompanying this information is the news that out of 44 people suspected of facilitating the suicide of a friend or family member in the past 18 months, not a single one has been prosecuted in the UK, leading to the conclusion by many that there is an unspoken but real legalization of assisted suicide now in the UK.

Finally, Radio Netherlands today reports that the Dutch Physicians Association has expanded the guidelines for “eligibility” when it comes to assisted suicide.  From the news report:

After almost a year of discussions, the KNMG has published a position paper which says that social factors and diseases and ailments that are not terminal may also qualify as unbearable and lasting suffering under the Euthanasia Act.

Vulnerable
At the moment, there are approximately one million elderly people in the Netherlands with multi-morbidity (two or more long-term diseases or ailments) and that number is expected to rise to 1.5 million in the course of the coming decade. According to the new guidelines, vulnerability (or fragility) refers to health problems, and the ensuing limitations, as well as a concurrent decline in other areas of life such as financial resources, social network and social skills.

As people age, many suffer from a complex array of gradually worsening problems, which can include poor eyesight, deafness, fatigue, difficulty walking and incontinence as well as loss of dignity, status, financial resources, an ever-shrinking social network and loss of social skills. Although this accumulation of ailments and diseases is not life-threatening, they do have a negative impact on the quality of life and make the elderly vulnerable, or fragile. Vulnerability also affects the ability to recover from illnesses and can lead to unbearable and lasting suffering.

 In other words, this proposal suggests that elderly people experiencing common risk factors for anyone wanting to commit suicide (decline of financial resources and/or social network, for example) should be eligible for assisted suicide or euthanasia.  I call this “culling the herd.”

I don’t know what’s makes me angrier – that all of this assisted suicide advocacy goes on during a period in which suicide prevention is supposed to be promoted…

Or the deadly, consistent and determined silence of the (cough) suicide prevention community when suicide is actively promoted as praiseworthy and deserving of “assistance” for old, ill and disabled people.

Would it be too much to ask to just cancel the whole Suicide Prevention Week/Day thing?  Right now, all those events are accomplishing is to highlight just how selectively the whole concept of “prevention” is being applied.  –Stephen Drake 

Disability Rights Iowa Accuses Governor of Abandoning Those in Nursing Homes to Greater Abuse and Neglect

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There’s a really disturbing story out of Iowa that could be the tip of the iceberg in terms of what could be playing out nationally in the current economic and political climate.

Clark Kauffman, of the Des Moines Register, writes that Group says Branstad actions cause nursing home deaths: 

An organization that advocates for disabled Iowans says decisions made by Gov. Terry Branstad are causing the state’s nursing home residents to suffer and die.

Disability Rights Iowa, which is part of a national network of advocacy groups established by Congress, published a scathing, open letter to Branstad on Wednesday, questioning the governor’s pursuit of a less punitive method of regulating Iowa’s nursing homes.

Sylvia Piper, the organization’s executive director, told Branstad in the letter that because of his “political choices, people are suffering and dying on a regular basis in Iowa’s nursing homes.” Piper invited Branstad to join her on a two-day tour of care facilities.

“I want you to see what I have seen,” she wrote. “I want you to witness up close the effects of abuse and neglect. I wager that less than 24 hours after our return, if you are even remotely human, you will double the number of nursing home inspectors on your staff.”

The open letter that Kauffman cites is located on the website for Disability Rights Iowa.  While Kauffman recounts the complaints in Ms. Piper’s accurately, the actual language she uses is much more harsh and blunt than Kauffman’s column:

Terry Branstad believes nursing home residents, many who have witnessed or experienced abuse or neglect, no longer need anyone to protect them. Rod Roberts, director of the Iowa Department of Inspections and Appeals, gets his marching orders directly from Branstad. They both agree that no inspectors are needed; the nursing homes should be left to police themselves, much the way Wall Street polices itself.

Branstad has a lucrative arrangement with the nursing home lobby. They give his campaign tens of thousands of dollars, he helps them run under the radar by removing those who would hold them accountable. Under this egregious arrangement, nursing home residents are left alone and helpless in an environment historically notorious for abuse and neglect.

When Roberts fired 10 nursing home inspectors last year (under the guise of budget cutting), the Iowa Legislature appropriated $640,000 to reinstate these positions. Legislators understood that oversight is critical when politics threatens to corrupt the system designed to protect Iowa’s most vulnerable citizens. Roberts took the money, but used it for purposes other than rehiring nursing home inspectors.

This isn’t your “normal” story of abuse and neglect in nursing homes. (In which case we tend to oppose giving more money to those facilities and argue that the best remedy for institutional abuse and neglect is to provide people support they need in their own homes in the community.)

Nope – this story is about dismantling the barely adequate monitoring system that exists so that nursing facilities won’t have to fear being held accountable any more.

It doesn’t take a rocket scientist – or a policy analyst – to predict that having less oversight and accountability will result in a decline in the quality of care – including increased incidents of abuse, neglect and preventable deaths.  But, at the same time, the state’s newest reports on nursing facilities – based on less oversight – will make them look better than ever.

But I fear that’s what we’ll see more and more of in the current climate in which older and disabled people are seen as drains on the economy. Match that up to a philosophy that says that business needs less “regulatory burden” and you have a perfect storm for this alarming scenario to be played out in many states across the country.  –Stephen Drake

Guest Blog: Paul Timmons – It’s Time to Stop Playing Nice With the Emergency Management Community After Continued Failure to Serve Disabled Disaster Victims

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 Shortly after posting Susan Dooha’s blog post on the lack of accessibility she encountered in emergency shelters during Hurricane Irene, I asked a friend and colleague if he’d be interested in writing a reaction/followup to Susan’s post.  Paul Timmons has a lot of experience with disaster relief – what entities such as the Red Cross do  and don’t do, and the areas in which “fall short” would be too kind a description for FEMA‘s performance.  Paul’s response follows directly below, but there is more information about Paul and ways in which you can help people in disaster situations that FEMA and the Red Cross don’t reach effectively or consistently, to say the least.  Please read my afterword.

Now, here’s Paul Timmons:
The problem with disaster preparedness and response work is that it is extremely difficult to get people to care until we have an event at hand.

But if you’re one of the crips who can’t access one of those shelters Susan Dooha told us about, you’re gonna care a lot….right up to the point you die in the storm.

In countless media appearances after hurricane Ike, I said that the biggest lesson we learned from Ike was that we hadn’t learned anything from Katrina, three years earlier.  Not a single ‘special needs shelter’ in Houston was accessible. Well, another three years have passed and…here we go again.

I guess there’s supposed to be some solace knowing they don’t call them ‘special needs shelters’ anymore.  But, frankly, I’d be willing to give that up if crips could actually get into them and take, well, shelter.

Millions of dollars have been spent on the subject since Katrina.   Seriously…millions.   Conferences have been held…conference calls have been had…’plans’ have been laid….press releases have been released….promissory ‘contracts’ have been signed, amidst great fanfare….and it’s been discussed ad nauseum.  And yet, just a few days ago, a leader in our greatest city finds that, as a practical matter, it has all been for naught.

And it’s not just Irene.  We have seen it in every domestic disaster to which we’ve responded.  Alabama, North Georgia, Joplin, the Florida and Mid-Western floods.  There’s always a lot of talk and posturing from FEMA and state and local emergency response types…while crips suffer…and die.

I had high hopes that FEMA would become an effective bully pulpit on this issue.  But it hasn’t happened.  My view is that FEMA is so hopelessly dysfunctional that even the best intentioned people can’t really do much with it.  In fact, all the vapid chest thumping on this issue is dangerous.  It creates a false sense of accomplishment.

The fact that there’s somebody in a wheelchair sitting in on the meetings makes everybody feel all warm and fuzzy.  But almost always, any attention to people with disabilities stops there.

And there’s this:  Every time somebody throws us a bone…we go hide in the corner and quietly play with it.

So….What’s to be done?

Well….we have to stop playing nice. 

Some of this stuff is probably actionable.  So let’s sue somebody.

Let’s engage in direct action on the issue.  And let’s start at FEMA HQ in DC. And local, state and national Red Cross offices.  And city, county and state emergency management offices.

Let’s create our own infrastructure…operate our own shelters……..take care of ourselves.

We have the people power and networks to fix this.  What we don’t have, yet, is an understanding of this fact:  The Overlords of the emergency management community have shown to an indisputable certainty that they don’t really care whether we live or die. 

And ya know what?  As I wrote that last line, it occurred to me: it’s not entirely accurate.  The reality is…they’re actually trying to kill us.

Afterword: 
 
I think readers should know that Paul’s outrage is a result of extensive experience.  See, Paul doesn’t just express his outrage about the inefficiencies and ineptitudes of government agencies and “helping” organizations – he spends a lot of time and effort trying to do something to make the lives of the overlooked victims of natural disasters easier.

 

For almost ten years, Paul has been working tirelessly with Portlight Strategies, Inc., a  501c3 organization that is dedicated to “meeting specific needs of the underserved, unserved and forgotten people.”  It turns out that there are significant groups of people in disasters and emergency situations who that get overlooked, get minimal help, or don’t receive aid that is actually “helpful.”  People with disabilities is just one of these groups.  That’s where Portlight Strategies comes in.

 

If you want to know more about Portlight Strategies, check the “Our Story” section of their site.

Please also check the FAQ section, for instructions on how to contact and/or donate to Portlight Strategies; This link lets you access a copy of the organization’s 2010 financial report so you can see how they spend their resources.

 

Please take the time to learn more about the organization and if you want to help out with disaster relief efforts – past, present and future – please consider giving to Portlight Strategies – which concentrates on getting to those getting the least with those things they need the most.
 

CNN: “Choosing death can be like a ‘birth,’ advocates say” – NDY and NCD perspectives included

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Two interesting and fairly unusual related things happened over the last two weeks.

First, CNN reporter Elizabeth Landau contacted both NDY and the National Council on Disability (NCD) for interviews in connection to a story on assisted suicide.  This was surprising considering that when CNN ran a mini-media tour with Jack Kevorkian during the promotion of the HBO docudrama “You Don’t Know Jack,” everyone who interviewed Kevorkian avoided mentioning that most of his “clients” weren’t terminally ill.  And, of course, no one contacted any disability groups for our take on Kevorkian.

The second surprise is that when the article came out on the CNN website today, the views and concerns are fairly presented in the context of an article on the activities of the assisted suicide advocacy group “Compassion and Choices,” also known as “Conflation and Con Jobs.”  That’s no reflection on Ms. Landau, whose work I am unfamiliar with.  The negative expectations are based on overall patterns when dealing with media rather than anything with her – or even CNN – specifically.

As I said, though, in this case I can say that I, as NDY spokesperson in the article, am represented fairly and accurately – with minor quibbles that I won’t even mention, since they happen with just about every interview as a result of the inevitable distortion that comes into play in human communication.

The article, Choosing death can be like a ‘birth,’ advocates say, does indeed deliver some content every bit as creepy as the title might lead you to believe:

Portland, Oregon (CNN) — James Powell could barely speak on the day he died; cancer had confined him to bed and heavy painkillers left him only semi-lucid. Yet the mood was almost celebratory as 25 people — family, friends and volunteers — gathered in a large living room to tell stories and say goodbye on the day Powell chose to end his suffering.

Here’s the piece of the article that contains the bulk of the comments from me and NCD:

The law is significant for more than just the few people who actually go through the entire process of obtaining lethal medications and taking them, said Barbara Coombs Lee, president of Compassion & Choices.

“End of life care and empowered patients are better for everyone in the state,” she said.

But this creates a double standard for the prevention of suicide, argues Stephen Drake, research analyst for the organization Not Dead Yet, a disability advocacy group that opposes physician-assisted suicide.

In his view, the Death with Dignity Act establishes a two-tiered system in which some people’s suicides are more encouraged than others. It’s the idea that young, healthy and nondisabled people should be prevented from dying, while the deaths of the old, ill and disabled should be facilitated, he said.

“When you look at it that way, it doesn’t look so much like empowerment’s at work,” Drake said.

There’s a difference between helping a patient feel comfortable at the end of life and “making killing an acceptable part of medical practice,” he said. He said he fears advocates will attempt to expand the established law’s requirements to include more and more people, although Coombs Lee said her organization has no interest in broadening the eligibility rules for the Death with Dignity Act.

Groups like Not Dead Yet and the National Council on Disability are also concerned that the top three reasons for people using the law in Oregon are consistently “loss of autonomy,” “decreasing ability to participate in activities that made life enjoyable” and “loss of dignity.” These reasons seem to be predicated on the notion that a disabled life is viewed as one that is not worth living, opponents of assisted suicide argue. The disability council would like these reasons examined more closely.

 There’s a little bit more in a different part of the article and I hope people read the whole thing.  It would also be helpful if some folks took time to write in the “comments” section at CNN.

One mentionable quibble I have is that there isn’t any mention in the article of the other advocacy groups in the US pushing for broader “eligibility” for suicide assistance.  The activities and advocacy of the Final Exit Network (FEN) provide evidence that supports our claims that there will be efforts to expand the eligibility for “assistance” in suicide, since many assisted suicide advocates don’t think the Oregon law goes nearly far enough.

And, finally, yes, the quote with me using the term “end of life” is accurate.  I really used it.  I promise to try to never do it again. –Stephen Drake

ADDENDUM: NCD issued a comprehensive report on Assisted Suicide from a disability perspective in 1997.  It reissued the report with a new cover memorandum in 2005.

Both can be accessed at the links immediately above.