What is Wrong with the American Association of Suicidology Statement?
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 14 October 2023
Summary
Abstract
“‘Suicide’ is not the same as ‘physician aid in dying’” proclaims the American Association of Suicidology 2017 statement. Nevertheless, I argue that (1) this pragmatic distinction is grounded in the scientific-medical approach to suicide, which focuses on parameters of objectivity and rationality that are at least questionable. (2) The weakness of the distinction suggests that the AAS statement may draw the bull’s eye around the arrow, i.e. it seeks to bypass the epistemological and ethical challenge that voluntary death confronts us with by denying the rationality of the act or by doubting suicidal agency on the grounds of pathological irrationality. By doing so, (3) it fails to grasp the complex and reluctant nature of suicidal thought as an (all too) human phenomenon and may even undermine its own purpose.
Keywords: AAS, anti-logic, death, pathology, rationality, suicide
Suicide and physician aid in dying
“‘Suicide’ is not the same as ‘physician aid in dying’” is the title of a statement published by the American Association of Suicidology (AAS) board in August 2017. The AAS, a nationally recognized NGO founded in 1968 by Edwin S. Shneidman, a clinical psychologist who largely shaped suicide discourse through research methods and terms such as “psychache,” “psychological autopsy,” “pseudocide notes” as well as the notion of “suicidology” itself, actively promotes the prevention of suicide through research, public awareness programs, education and training (Farberow 1993, pp. 337–345; Litman et al. 1963, pp. 924–929; Shneidman 1993; Shneidman and Farberow 1957). Since its inception the AAS is actively promotes the prevention of suicide through research, public awareness programs, education and training. In response to the legalization developments of aid in dying in a number of jurisdictions, the AAS released the above statement, which was formulated as a two-phase model convened and consolidated by Margaret Battin, one of the leading bioethics researchers in the field of end-of-life issues and suicide in particular.
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- Approaches to Death and DyingBioethical and Cultural Perspectives, pp. 33 - 48Publisher: Jagiellonian University PressPrint publication year: 2021