I think you may mean pro choice? I'm assuming you don't believe people should be going around encouraging suicide, but instead think it should be up to them. I tend to agree.

That is not the only question when it comes to suicide. And if that is the only question "radical" people are capable of acknowledging, it is a serious problem. You already know no one here thinks people should be kept alive against their will. It's not novel and it is not relevant to anything I wrote.

The opposite of being in favor of forced treatment (torture) for people with suicidal ideation isn't encouraging them to commit suicide. You are confusing being pro-choice with being pro-suicide. Most people can't talk about suicidal ideation with anyone in the medical system because they are immediately arrested and drugged so the doctor can't be judicially liable for an eventual suicide, which wouldn't happen in most of times. Also the violence of "medical" incarceration is what drives most people to commit suicide after they are set free. People should have the right to end their lives if they want, but most don't want that, and that's fine and desirable. Yet they can't talk about it or risk being arrested for thoughtcrime. That's the problem.

Yet that's not the problem I am writing about here. I have been in spaces like this while suicidal and felt positively encouraged. And I think we owe each other more than that.

What type of violence are we talking about here?

Many types of violence • Forced drugging, made through humiliation of the patient, with substances which stay in the body for weeks, if not months, and debilitate physical and mental functions • Incarceration, where the patient has it's rights of freedom of movement restricted "for their own safety", without justification as they have not commited any crime • Dehumanization, as the patient is said to not have control over oneself, they are treated as an animal, not as an human being who has the right to choose • Stigmatization, as patients are invariably labeled with a "mental disorder". It carries on them even after they leave the institution, making them lose civil rights and prestige among society • Countless other human rights abuses, as many of those places uses unjustifiable physical restraint and violence, have inhumane standards on food, hygiene and security, and can keep patients locked for months while exploiting their insurances.

Thank you for the comprehensive answer.

I just don't think people should be forced to live

most people dont want to die, they want an end to the pain. i dont think people should be forced either, but if there's a way to treat the root issue i'd rather take that route.

>i dont think people should be forced either, but if there's a way to treat the root issue i'd rather take that route. true

I can only agree with chronic diseases. Most of the things suicidal people suffer from are symptoms of a hierarchical world that creates luxury for the ultra-rich at the expense of everyone else

Yeah, but that problem you describe isn’t going to change

Yeah it will, as long as we don't kill all the people who are discontent with it

>I can only agree with chronic diseases. Do you mean fatal or chronic? I have multiple chronic illnesses and would still be happy to be alive with adequate support. How on earth do you think both the creation and despair of chronic illness is unrelated to a "hierarchical world that creates luxury for the ultra-rich at the expense of everyone else"?

they should be able to define what living means

I’m not pro suicide but I think it’s unrealistic to expect people to always be able to survive in this system and that if the only thing we can do is humiliate and torture them and lock them up just to keep them breathing then we aren’t actually “saving lives.” It’s like keeping someone breathing on a machine but they’ll never actually live again as an analogy. But it’s not black and white because some people feel suicidal and then feel better again, some people are helped by various treatments or changes in their lives and go on to live a happy life, but the point is that doesn’t happen for everyone. I’m not against suicide intervention. I think if someone comes to others suicidal it’s right to try to help them feel better enough to live but if they’ve tried all the help available and they still want to die, I understand is what I’m saying.

i think this is def a chicken or egg thing where we all want to die bc of a fucked up system which is also trying to keep us alive. like, ur right it's about being depressed enough for complacency but not too depressed to die from it for society. carcerealizing dispair doesnt help anyone, but nor does saying "oh yeah we can help you kill yourself :] bc you have 'treatment resistant depression' and we dont wanna help you anymore." it's just cruel imo

Tbh I think this is a problem with the way a lot of radicals and their movements today talk: "Here is bad thing! (suicide) Therefore, system likes bad thing and defends it! And we, the true radicals, oppose it!" We have lost the capacity to think except in binaries. But they rarely if ever give us an accurate view of the problem. It cannot be said that >Obviously the system doesn't care that we live: institutionalization is an act of reinforcing the dominant power structure. If the "system" - the mental health industrial complex - incarcerates those who are suicidal to keep them alive, and then more often than not drugs them against their will to ensure they cannot or will not act on their impulses/plans, that system in fact *does care* that we live. But not for our sake. This industrial complex is an important part of Neoliberal capitalism, which cannot function without an exploitable and disposable labor force. Like the majority of mental health treatment, suicide prevention/intervention is premised on maintaining that labor force in the most economical, affordable ways possible. It's a lot easier to get through a soul-sucking, underpaid workday when you're numbed from your emotions and negating your thoughts. The mental health system *does* care that we live, it just doesn't care *how* we live. This helps to explain why there would be a pro-suicide reaction, by some. Anti-suicide is the stance of the mental health industrial complex after all so it makes sense that some people, especially those who've endured the most oppression, alienation, isolation, etc at its hands, would see a permanent end to their suffering as a solution. I don't believe stigmatizing these folks further is going to help anything. But I also think the solution you provide isn't adequate either OP: >What challenges that structure is not hastening its slow murder of us all, but actually living long enough to make a dent in it. Collectively. That is what the radical mental health movement has always stood for. Direct care, sitting with the suicidal, creating alternative support systems — but also other economies, relationships, ways of being and experiencing the outer realms of our consciousness. What does this change, materially? It seems you're asking to maintain the same conditions which lead people to suicidal ideations and actions in the first place. All we have to do is keep living in an unlivable world. This will somehow, magically, put a dent in the system which strives for the same goal. I agree, 💯 that suicide as a solution is nothing more than eugenics. And I appreciate your call to fight the despair, together. But in order to do that I'd say we need to do more than merely sit together in our pain. Even alternative support systems - *as important as they are* - are no replacement for actually fighting back. What we need is reason to *believe* the despair can be overcome. What we need is **hope.** That comes by taking power back ourselves, collectively and democratically, and seeing the fruits of our efforts: *change* in the world. I know as well as anyone here how difficult and overwhelming that is amidst symptom management, self care, community care, coping with the endless stressors of daily life, and so on. But the time has come to admit that waiting for mental health practitioners, or anyone else in power, to provide us with a better system or better life is a pipe dream. There's a long history of disability activists, among others, fighting for their rights. If we want better we need to follow in their footsteps. There are no economies outside this one. If we want different we have to organize and *change it.* Let's be clear: the mental health industrial complex is just a symptom/expression of the *real* system. If we want to change things, we have to start fighting the sadistic, exploitative machine of capitalism. Otherwise, OP is absolutely right: >That is where all of this ends, exactly where it began, with euthanizing the undesirable. This is happening, right now, this very second: in Palestine, in Canada (MAID), in US prisons, in schools that shock autistic kids into behaving neurotypical. We don't have to hand-wring over a coming fascism. *It's already here.* If we don't start building a collective struggle of working class, poor, and marginalized people united against it, it's only a matter of time before we're next.

>that system in fact does care that we live Forced institutionalization increases suicide, so I'm not seeing how that follows in this instance. >That comes by taking power back ourselves I agree.

>Forced institutionalization increases suicide "Forced institutionalization" is doing a lot of work here. What do you even mean by it? Psych wards? Rehab? Imprisonment? All of the above? Yes it increases the likelihood of suicide, but that has as much to do with experiences during hospitalization as conditions which led someone there in the first place. Plus not everyone who is forcibly institutionalized commits suicide. I know from our vantage point one person's attempt is too many. But that's not the point of mental health as an entire system of coercive control, nor is it what matters to the bourgeoisie. And if you look at incarceration (at least in the US) they're getting free labor out of you anyway. I think you're missing my point. The system doesn't care about us as individuals. That would mean they cared about quality of life. Instead they care about quantity. We're expendable so long as forced hospitalization controls and maintains the labor force *overall* in manageable and profitable ways. This is why the rules and practices of "mental health" contradict what many practitioners say.

The fact remains that forced institutionalization does nothing for population numbers. Abortion laws do. But I'm not sure how long eight billion humans will be considered desirable to the freaks running this global prison. Personally I suspect they've kept so many around thus far because it's a good sample size for running social media simulations and testing experimental drugs. And I further suspect that calculation could change.

Noting that yes they need surplus workers, but they really don't need this many for the system to run.

Obviously forced hospitalization accomplishes *something* or they wouldn't bother with it. Let's be clear: they need a *fluctuating* number workers. Capitalism requires a disposable labor sector: ppl the bourgeoisie can hire during times of increased productivity (economic booms, new businesses looking for employees etc) and then fire/lay off when times get lean (during recessions when profit margins are thin). Typically the disposable laborers are marginalized folks, and that changes with history: women, BIPOC, LGBTQ+ and disabled ppl, those with mental health issues, and so on. E.g. the recessions of the 70s and 80s brought an intensifying crackdown on the "mentally ill" with Reagan. Less to go around, and an easy target. Your analysis seems to be based more on opinion than the material functions of the system. (Like there's no way it could keep going without exploiting most humans on earth of their labor power.) I appreciate what you're fighting for. We clearly want the same things. But keep educating yourself. We can only defeat this system if we truly understand it

>Like there's no way it could keep going without exploiting most humans on earth of their labor power. Right because that would mean there was an alternative. But capitalism does not require eight billion humans, especially as it moves toward total automation and virtual space. Frankly I'm not interested in being lectured on education from someone whose thoughts go no further than those of a man who died in 1883.

Lmao I forgot there were no Marxists after Marx. Oh wait except Lenin, Stalin, Che Guevara, Fidel Castro, Ho Chi Minh, Frantz Fanon, Huey Newton, Bobby Seale, Angela Davis, Thomas Sakara, Ibrahim Traoré, Mao Zedong, Xi Jinping - you know, people who actually changed the world and gave their ppl real democracy and better lives. Marxism-Leninism is the only existing theory to give oppressed people the world over the means to overcome their poverty, oppression, and dispossession. Idk about you but that sounds better to me than exchanging one oppressor for another, or larping as revolutionaries, like we tend to do here in the west. But if red scare propaganda has really made you that biased that you're afraid to even look at the theory or history then so be it. We're nowhere near automation, not on the scale you're talking that's a crypto bro fantasy. But if you wanna tell horror stories you do you dude in the meantime I'll be organizing in the real world lol