Please Stay - Page 4

I am mentally ill, and I have been physically ill. They are not the same. It is correct that we call them both “illness” and strive to hold the ill blameless: illnesses are, after all, nothing more than biochemical reactions which make life unpleasant for the organism. Physical and mental illness feed off of one another, and we would benefit from integrating their treatment more thoroughly. At the same time, they must be differentiated to understand the person experiencing them.

Stay, on the other hand, makes allowance for the possible suicide of the physically ill, but universally condemns “despair suicides.” This distinction seems shaky to me. Right now, my father is experiencing Alzheimer’s. If I eventually follow him in this malady, and choose to commit suicide rather than allowing dementia to take me and my relationships, is that a despair suicide or a legitimate rejection of a hopeless physical ailment? Or consider the young person with a chronic pain condition and major depressive disorder. How can these things be fully extracted? How can we decide what behavior is legitimate, and what is “self-murder?” Stay does not address this at all. It can’t. It’s drawn too hard a line, and can’t wriggle through these impossible uncertainties.