Stop Conflating Suicide and Assisted Dying – They Are Two Very Different Things

In the last fourteen months I have lost four friends. It has been a year of loss. Four very different types of death, and some regrets, which is so often the case when we lose people we love.

Last June, almost one year ago, one of my friends died by suicide. It was such a shock to hear the news and I wrote a little of those feelings in this piece. He was a good and kind man, but he was battling with some inner demons and ultimately it would be those voices, not ours, that overwhelmed him. According to his neighbour whose teenage son had seen him the morning that he took his own life, our friend was in a distressed state, manic perhaps, although no-one could imagine what he was about to do.

This is not what we are told suicidal people look like, we are told that once they have made their decision, they can often be quite calm, they have found a resolution to their problem, or at least that’s how it seems to them, but not to us, not those who are left behind.

I have thought about this …