a plea to the government

The mental health system is an abject failure at ethically and effectively handling suicide.

As far as I'm aware there's still no evidence based clinical guidance for acute and chronic suicidal ideation. Psychiatric research is very poor in this area and while suicidal ideation is found as one sub measure in depression research there's very little research focusing solely on this single measure. Suicidology as a focused field of scientific endeavour is small and underfunded. More funding for talking therapies is a flawed solution without specific therapeutic modalities and a more sophisticated diagnosis-treatment relationship designed around the complexities of suicide.

What's worse perhaps is the lack of legal assisted suicide for people with psychosocial disabilities (aka mental health problems). For many life is so awful it is unbearable and this unbearability is profoundly personal. Hopelessness and despair are natural reactions to the poor quality of life especially for severe psychosocial disabilities like schizophrenia. The attempted and successful suicide rate is very high for schizophrenia but there's little that modern psychiatary can do. (Things like the Open Diagalogue Approach are not generally practiced in this country) Suicide is a rational choie to end an awful life with little hope of recovery. It's better than living year upon year, day upon awful day wishing, hoping, for any death.

Mercy is absent. Without mercy there is inhumanity. The inhumanity is the torture of living when wanting to die. It's the curse is the lack of legalisation which forces the suicidal to end a bd life with what's often a bad death. Those who attempt suicide usually go to their deaths alone. If they fail they risk further disability and pain, for example from liver damage caused by overdoses. The most reliable methods inflicit harm and risk injury to innocent people.

It might be thought that those with psychosocial disabilities don't need help in dying but, in my personal experience, it can still be an insurmountable challenge. I beg for the mercy to end my wretched existence and for the right to a good death of one's choosing for those who have no hope of escape or relief but death itself. I beg for this because living life is a torture too great. I have been unable to bear it for many years.

Mercy Mr Clegg. Those failed by the system should not suffer unnecessarily. The mental pain behind suicide is personal but by its very nature is profound. No one should hope for their death but we live in inequitous times. At least let people like me have a good death. Have mercy on us all.

- sent from a tablet