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Would it be ethical to ask death-seeking people to go work in dangerous situations?
(sh.itjust.works)
this post was submitted on 06 Oct 2026
23 points (70.9% liked)
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While actually being able to help people might give people a reason to live, they might just step inside the door of a burning building, sit down, and wait for smoke inhalation ot take them, in which case, all you're really offering then is a method. So I'd say a full analysis of your plan would actually include EFFECTIVENESS; that is to say, what is the likely result of this action has some bearing.
But, if you're just interested in ethics, the broadly accepted ethic is that people are not allowed to kill themselves OR put themselves in dangerous situation because they want to die. In fact, if your mental health care worker SUSPECTS you of planning to do that, they're supposed to notify the state and the state evaluates you and locks you up against your will. And if the mental health practitioner does not do that and you do unalive yourself, they could lose their license and be sued into the ground by remaining family.
Despite the fact that forced hospitals stays do nothing--and are arguably worse--than other approaches that respect the patient's autonomy; despite the fact that calling the police destroys any trust a client has with a therapist, who is maybe their only person; despite the fact that this pressure makes the population of therapists willing to see suicidal patients much smaller....
So, yeah, there's things to be said about it, but I think your scenario is easily unethical under the current regime.
Which is bullshit.
I was born without my permission. Obviously. That's already bad enough.
I should at least be allowed to die from my own will. It's not like there is any physically possible way to regret death, just like there is no regret of not being born.
I sort of agree with you, but I come at it from a different angle.
I don't think people have an absolute right to kill themselves, but I think everyone is worse off where they have to monitor what they say to their therapists and have to worry about being imprisoned in an abusive unhelpful insitution. Seem like, in the aggregate, the world is a worse place for instituting the report-and-commit policy.
And, of course, the money that the hospital gets for jailing you wouldn't otherwise go to, say, housing.... it's a fucked up society from top to bottom.