Eternal stigma-If Depression is a disease like cancer, why can’t people decide to end their treatment as cancer patients often do?
My grandmother died of ovarian cancer. She lived 18 months past her “prognosis”. She endured something like 8 rounds of chemotherapy. Eventually she declined more chemo, stating that she was “at the end of her rope”
Another woman I know died of cancer after refusing conventional allopathic treatment, opting instead to treat with diet and alternative medicine. I don’t know what the end of her life was like.
I just wonder: When these women were making decisions about their disease, and how rigorously they would fight, and what structural damage they were willing to do to their body in the process, did anyone ask them to “think of their friends and family” and “consider the impact” their decisions about their treatment for their DISEASE would make on their PEERS?
I’m just curious. Internet, don’t fucking freak out. This isn’t a cry for help. But I believe this is a legitimate question, and worth ruminating. Is the difference wrapped up in what the doctors’ prognosis says? If a psychiatrist said to someone “well, shit. you can try these combination of toxic chemicals one by one for the next 30 years and hope one takes, or you’ll die” would it be more credible for a person to decline treatment?
I don’t remember anyone calling my grandmother selfish when she decided she’d exhausted her options. I don’t know about the other woman I mentioned- I wonder if, because she declined allopathic conventional treatment, people blamed her for dying.
Just please. Think before you speak. Honestly, does it even make sense that a suicidal person (I AM NOT SUICIDAL!) would be like “oh! holy shit, thanks for reminding me about my friends and family and how crushed they would be if I died. Let me just run to the psych now for another combination of potentially lethal drugs”?