New Jersey Program Aims to Prevent Suicide — Just Not All Suicides

New Jersey has started an admirable program to prevent suicide. From the NJ.com story:

A new state program will send trained mental health professionals and people with lived experience to respond to adults who contact the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline.

The Mobile Crisis Outreach Teams, which consist of one peer and one professional, will be dispatched through the state’s 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline centers to help adults struggling with mental illness and substance use disorder, without the need for police.

“Today’s announcement underscores that — in New Jersey — help is truly only a phone call or text message away,” Gov. Phil Murphy said in a statement announcing the program’s launch.

That’s great. Too bad the effort won’t apply to all suicides.

You see, assisted suicide is legal in New Jersey. The self-terminations of people with a prognosis of six months or less ceases to be “suicide” when facilitated by a doctor. Indeed, the terminology of the law has been engineered to create a false narrative: The request for suicide facilitation is redefined as a desire to “end my life in a humane and dignified manner.” The drugs used in prescribed intentional lethal overdoses are renamed “medications.” Even the cause of death in such cases will be mendaciously reported as “natural” on death certificates when the real reason is the ingestion of barbiturates.

Suicide is suicide — it is a what, not a why. The state can claim it wants to prevent suicides, but people who ask for assisted suicide rarely (if ever) receive these important interventions — even though suicide prevention is supposed to be an essential hospice service.

This is so wrong. Statistics demonstrate that suicidal terminally ill patients opt for assisted suicide generally because of existential issues, such as fears of burdening family, losing dignity, about how one will be remembered, and so on. It isn’t about untreatable pain (nor do laws so require). These are important matters that should and can be ameliorated through intensive social interventions like those that will be offered to other suicidal people under the New Jersey plan. Moreover, studies have demonstrated that legalization may increase other suicides, which would seem to undermine suicide prevention efforts generally.

Because New Jersey has legalized assisted suicide, its prevention program will not be universally applied. That is akin to saying to smokers, “Don’t smoke,” but then adding, “However, if you do, use a filter cigarette.” The anti-suicide message is utterly inconsistent and, therefore, likely to be less effective.