Does the individuals right to autonomy, respected with a DNR, differ in this type of case?

The question whether physicians should assist patients in ending their own lives, a process known as physician-assisted suicide, can to public attention in the 1990s when Dr. Jack Kevorkian, a Michigan physician, began providing terminally ill patients with the means to end their lives through pharmacological injections. Kevorkians very public involvement sprang from what he saw as a righteous campaign to alleviate peoples suffering and allow them to die with dignity. He was imprisoned for 8 years following the televised assisted suicide he performed on a man with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), a terminal nervous system disease.

Medical professionals encourage (or sometimes require) patients, terminally ill or not, to direct them in an advance directive or living will by stating whether they wish to have artificial life support should they be unable to survive on their own. The advance directive often includes a DNR or do-not-resuscitate order in which the patient specifies that no heroic life-support measures should be taken to prolong life with, for example, life-support machines. Medical professionals respect the conditions of the DNR when they must make life-and-death decisions. In contrast, when individuals who have psychological disorders and wish to end their lives embark upon the same plans as a medical patient with a life-threatening illness, clinicians treat them to prevent them from committing suicide. The treatment may include involuntary hospitalization.

The obligation to respect end-of-life wishes may present an ethical-conflict for mental health professionals when treating suicidal individuals who complete a DNR stating that they do not wish to be given life support. The question is whether having a serious psychological disorder that is incapacitating, resistant to treatment, and debilitating is any different from having a similarly untreatable and painful medical illness.

You be the judge: Does the individuals right to autonomy, respected with a DNR, differ in this type of case?






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