Nearly Sane,
Surely that would depend on your overall theory of ethics? While I have noticed that there is a strain in your writing that takes an objectivist position, you haven't ever openly justified it and you would need to do so here if you are going down this route.
The question is, is it ethical to prohibit suicide, and the answer, is no, it isn't.
Mental health workers, whenever they do so, usurp the inalienable prerogative of the individual to dispose of an existence which, even in its best moments, is a pointless, Sisyphean chore, a glorified endurance test.
Strindberg was right when he said the only people comfortable in this world are swines. In the modern age this is especially true. How anyone can have anything other than a jaundiced view of the world, man, and human relations is beyond my powers of comprehension.
I mean, this may not please psychiatrists, the great pathologizers of the all too sane cynicism of some of us (which they call paranoia, which there is always at least a grain of truth in, and is often the product of a clearer vision and a greater sensitivity to the injustice most people are so deeply mired and complicit in that it is no wonder they dismiss us as paranoid), but human beings are really overrated, a product no doubt of the fact that it is only man himself that is able to evaluate the species.
When we want to deny people rights (especially fundamental ones like freedom) we'd better have damn good reasons for doing so, so in a fair ethical discussion the burden of argument so to speak lies with those denying rights, not those affirming them. Freedom should only be limited by absolute necessity, i.e my freedom ends where yours begins and vice versa. If it cannot be shown that suicide is a breach of the rights of others then it clearly isn't wrong, which isn't to say that it's necessarily smart or rational.
Given the fact that slavery has long been abolished what are we arguing about here really? In a free, open society every person is the sole owner of his or her life and body so therefore it follows they can do whatever they damn well please with it, provided they do not endanger others or cause a public disturbance. The myth of mental illness (quite mysterious diseases/disorders which do not have traceable biological features so seem to exist mainly in the subjective, socio-cultural realm - with possible exceptions such as schizophrenia) has too long been used to degrade people and rob them off their natural rights and I happen to think this is a bloody outrage.
The lack of rationality of an action (in this case suicide) should not be a criterium for goverment intervention otherwise they'll be able to control the whole of society and a scenario à la 1984 or Brave New World isn't far off. That's if committing suicide under extreme mental duress is even irrational: surely if one suffers mentally or emotionally for years on end and there's no real cure or effective relief (Plath and Woolf come to mind) it's hard not to see these poor people's quality of life is below zero and it's pretty damn rational to want to end all that meaningless suffering. If I were a cynic I might be inclined to belief the de facto suicide prohibition is more to the benefit of the mental health and pharmacological industry than to those they're supposed to help and heal (hard to do that if you don't even know the cause of the problem). As Sasz justly asked: qui bono?
In short: if someone close to me had to suffer so horrendously and the medical establishment failed them so miserably I'd completely understand and even applaud their decision to end their life. That's the real tragedy here, isn't it? If suicide is indeed closely associated with mental suffering and it is the job of psychiatrists and psychologists to treat this suffering and still the suicide-rate is through the roof then clearly they're
not very good at their job so they denounce suicide (on highly spurious grounds) in order to avoid being denounced by it just like the clergy in Hume's time argued against it based on nothing but weak sophisms which he easily refuted.
If psychiatrists and their ilk are so keen on rationality perhaps they can explain to us why they still haven't found any biological cause for these mental conditions or why they still don't know how their medications and talk therapies are supposed to work and why they so often don't work at all. The answer to the suicide problem is not more prevention (blaming the victim, if ever so subtely) but better, scientifically valid care which up to date is sadly lacking. Make sure you can actually cure people of their mental illnesses and they'll flock to you for treatment (as they do to other medical specialties) and I'm confident (almost) no-one would not rather be relieved from their problem than die by their own hand which is a grim enterprise even in the best of circumstances and the great majority of suicides clearly do not die under the best of circumstances. Which in itself is an outrage: not only do we not respect people's right to self-determination but we in effect force them to carry out their act in secrecy (as if it were a crime, which de jure it isn't) with highly imperfect means (resulting in grave, horrible consequences such as disfigurement, brain damage, handicaps and the like), reinforcing the stigma attached to suicide and thus adding to the burden of those left behind.
As to the subject of death: clearly it doesn't concern us (we cannot experience death since this implies a consciousness so the very thing which death destroys) and it is only an evil if there is an immortal soul AND there is some kind of deity who thinks killing oneself to escape suffering is somehow a breach of modesty meriting more punishment. Both elements seem incredibly improbable to me.
