Would you consider it suicide if a person with a Chronic Medical condition chose to discontinue treatment?

Question

If that treatment were neccessary to sustain life? I am asking this in the Religious forum as well as Psychology to see if answers differ based on faith. I am asking this mainly from the Christian point of view as I am Catholic.

Call this a theoretical question.

Answer 1

This issue came up in a very personal way for me when I was a Christian. My mother had advanced emphysema and lung cancer; she chose to not have surgery to remove the tumor, as her quality of life was already badly impaired; the surgery would have entailed more pain than she was already suffering, and at most it would have delayed the inevitable without an improvement in her quality of life.

Was it suicide? Strictly speaking, you could argue it is, but I believe that it was justifiable; she chose to not do desperate things to prolong an already painful and increasingly frantic need to get oxygen. As it was, the process took several months, and her family was with her to the end. I think she made the right decision.

Answer 2

My mother was diagnosed with cancer in July 2005. It was stage 4 lung cancer, the doctors told her that she could take chemo and radiation and that she might live 3-6 mths. when she asked him how long she had without treatment he said 3-6 mths. She opted not to take any treatment as it would not cure her, would not prolong her life, and would probably make her sicker in the long run. She went on several trips(one was a 22 state tour with her best friend), spent time with family and friends, enjoyed Thanksgiving and Christmas. She got to the point that she had too much trouble breathing on Sunday Jan. 29th, she went on hospice and she died on Sunday Feb.19 peacefully at home with the family gathered around her.
Now I don't know what the chronic condition is, or what the treatment is. If it is something like dialysis while waiting for a kidney transplant then I would say continue the treatment because there is hope for a transplant and another chance at life. If it is a terminal illness and the person chooses as did my mother to not take treatments, then no it is not suicide.
I am a Christian, United Methodist, and I believe that she made the right choice for her.

Answer 3

Good question. I am a Christian and don't see any objection in discontinuing treatment. Sometimes that treatments are just as painful and horrible as the diease. Especially when you consider that most treatments only extends life and does not save the life. Some just feel they are giving it over to God. Yet some feel that they will pray God gives the doctors wisdom and therefore take the doctor's advice. So, that may offer reasons why one makes the decision. However, is it suicide? I would say no. You did not choose to have a terminal illness. However, you can choose how you deal with it.

Answer 4

As a person of faith and a person who is disabled but not life threatening nobody except the person living in their body , can understand their quality of life.

I've often thought we don't have qualms when we put an animal down if it's suffering but we go all nuts if it's a human being.

I'm not necessarily for or against euthenasia, however if a person is psychologically sound and has been deemed so by a psychologist andor psychiatrist and one's family doctor , then I think that person if they think their quality of life cannot be helped any more should have the option of taking one's life .

I applauded the Sue Rodriguez case in Canada but as a Disabled Woman I fought against the father who ' mercifully' murdered his daughter because he "thought" she was suffering. She didn't indicate she was , he just couldn't handle having a severely disabled child.James Lattimore, he's in jail now exactly where he should be.

It's a thorny issue and only the person with the chronic illness in consultation with family and medical professionals should make that decision.

Answer 5

No..it is not suicide, unless this person take some actions to put an end to his/her life. The person with chronic medical condition who chose to discontinue treatment is just leaving the natural course of life working in the body, and this could last any time.

Answer 6

No, because that person is making a decision to live the rest of his life, how they choose. Sometimes medical treatments can be debilitating and cause people to be away from their family and friends. The chose to discontinue treatment could allow that person to be with the people they love when they die, rather in a hospital full of strangers.

Answer 7

properly, as quickly as we are born we start to die. in case you permit your self die of an ailment that may not be able to be cured, i does no longer evaluate it suicide. i'm specific you will discover many Christians with many different perspectives on the situation, so I doubt if there's a God that this God would have the skill to consider everybody and not be contradicting. If the scientific care is mandatory to residing, it relatively is a terminal ailment which will kill this man or woman. drugs basically extend this adventure. Why even take the medicine at the beginning if death is God's want?

Answer 8

Everyone try to be consistent.

When all these religious guidelines about life vs. ongoing medical treatment vs. sucicide evolved, there was no life support or any of the things we consider common place. Your kidneys failed, you slowly ebbed out. Cancer and any other chronic illness, same. Had a big stroke, slowly died over the next few days. Pneumonia? Usually, bye.
The rule about no sucicide, even, was a later addition after so many Christians found life on earth so intolerable that they were choosing to move on to the next life by their own hand, and the church had to put an end to the epidemic sucicide.
Rhetorically, just because now in modern times some treatment exists, does that mean that the ill person is mandated to accept it just because it exists, or that the medical system is mandated to insist upon it just becauseit exists? Emphatically not. Some of these treatments just amount to torture, once you strip away everyone's hope and good intentions.
Going back to the original statement about being consistent, if some hundreds of years ago someone had a stroke, couldn't eat, and their life ebbed away over a few days, the family would be there praying with the priest, would get the rites, etc, everyone anticipates going happily to heaven. Actually, just exactly how it is right now in most of the world.
Now, same situation, (in a modern Western society with access to health care) the person chooses to omit the life support or feeding tube or antibiotics or whatever, how it that different? If you say it is, then there are different standards for those with and without access to modern health care. Or different standards for some one in our times vs. of the past. That seem inconsistent.

Death is part of life. If we respect life, then we need also respect death. Whatever one's religious beliefs, I think we were not put on this earth to finish life on a machine or miserably uncomfortable with no quality of life. One could even make a case that finishing life that way is disrespectful of life.
Just look at all the persons that the medical system allowed to survive some condition that would have caused certain death in the past (or currently in most parts of the world). The nursing homes are full of them. Many lay there rarely seen by their so called loved-ones; this does not exactly meet criteria for 'honor thy father & mother' in my book.
And while we're on the 10 Commandments, try to put in perspective: 'thou shall not kill' was from a pagan time when human sacrifice still was commonplace.

Warping the rational omission of medical care with sucicide or murder is just wholly illogical. I plan to honor my father & mother by giving them the best possible quality of life. Keeping that as the clear focus, I plan for all of us to make it to whatever heaven is when our time comes.

Answer 9

If the ill person had decided to pursue alternative therapies for the condition no, that is hardly suicide, that would be taking control of their own life.

If the ill person decided to stop, say, chemotherapy treatments because they are not benefiting and the therapy itself was making them miserable, I'd still say no. It would not be suicide it would be accepting the inevitable.

Either way I'd have a lot of respect for the ill person.

Answer 10

Discontinuing treatment by choice is one thing but having your life snuffed out is another. I would choose to discontinue treatment if I had a chronic medical condition that there was no cure for. I would not want to be hooked to machines to do my breathing, to beat my heart, to feed me, or to empty me. I am dead as far as dead goes. I knew a person that chose to quit medical therapy, he had sugar diabetes, had to go to dialysis. Chose not to. Do I think he went to hell for this, no I do not. Modern medical treatments does not equate the mind of God.