Moral Permissiveness and the Rationale for Suicide and Depression

When a person experiences mental and emotional distress, he or she should make an effort to visit a counsellor. Understanding the problem is crucial to know if it is physical, they should see a physician, even if it does not mean that the challenge is not entirely related.  The body and mind have a clear distinction but considering physical and mental health; the two should not be regarded as separate (Enright, 2018). It is crucial to realise the relationship between the mind and body are not separate entities to maximize a patient’s wellbeing. It is critical because poor physical health is a potential factor that predisposes one to high risks of developing mental health problems. It is also considered that poor mental health negatively affects physical health, resulting in high stakes of some conditions. For instance, people experiencing the highest levels of self-rated distress are predisposed to increased risks of dying from cancer. Enright (2018) shows that depression is highly associated with a high prevalence rate of coronary heart disease. Mental health conditions do not receive the appropriate healthcare they are entitled to. It is suggested that the users of the mental health services are statistically less like to have routine check-ups. It shows negative impacts because there is a defection of symptoms of physical infections at an early stage. It is crucial to understand the most explicit place that links up physical and mental health because they significantly impact life expectancies.

Nature of Depression

Depression can be described as a mood disorder that may cause feelings of anger, sadness, or loss that interfere with a person’s day-to-day activities. People experience depression in different ways that result in lower productivity and loss of time. The consequences of depression are harsh because they affect relationships and results in chronic health conditions. Depression worsens conditions such as asthma, cancer, cardiovascular disease, arthritis, obesity, and diabetes. One must understand that feeling down at times is a normal part of life since events that upsets and saddens one may occur at any time. Feeling hopeless and down regularly should call one’s attention because they could be dealing with depression. Depression is a severe condition that calls for immediate medical attention because it can worsen if proper treatments are not implemented. Medical treatment results if improvements of the symptoms in few weeks. Major depression conditions may cause a variety of symptoms that may be ongoing, come and go resulting in effects on the body and mood. Different gender and age show other signs related to their mood, emotional wellbeing, behaviours, sexual interests, cognitive abilities, physical wellbeing, and sleeping patterns.

Depression may be caused by several factors that range from detailed to biological causes. The common ones include: early childhood trauma that may have makes one react to a stressful situation. Family history is a significant cause of developing the condition if the family has a history of depressive disorder. Brain structure, medical condition, and drug are potential causes of the diseases. There are two significant types of depression disorder, include persistent and major depressive disorder. It is vital to understand the implication of depression on the mental health of children and adolescents, for at least 1 out of 6 younger people are admitted to psychiatric hospitals to take up depressive disorder diagnosis. Depression has even been highlighted as one of the vital psychiatric disorders related to suicidal cases, especially in children and adolescents. It shows the attention and effort that has been put to study depression in adolescents and children in extensive areas of research like psychology and psychiatry, along with related disciplines. Research suggests an enormous interest in the professionalism of evaluation, nature, and treatment of depression in young people. There is a delayed focus on depression in young people because of the myth or ideas of adolescent turmoil overshadowed by the diverse professional validity of the disorder as a form of psychopathology in the younger age.

Medical and Philosophical Definitions of Depression

Medical definitions involve thorough physical tests that consist of tests that depend on a person’s sex, age, and health. It is also related to the practice or study of medicine. Medicine is a field that has various doctors, nurses, and specialists. They are fields of health and health, for they cover treatment, diagnosis, medical research, disease prevention, and diverse aspects of health. Medicine’s primary objective is to maintain and promote the health and wellbeing of humans. Modern medicine has various fields and factors, including biomedical research, clinical practice, surgery, medications, and medical devices (General Assembly of the World Medical Association, 2014). Medicine is dividing into alternative medicine and complementary medicine, which rely on traditional knowledge. Clinical research enables researchers to compare the effects of drug therapy with no treatment by implementing psychotherapy, physical and occupational therapy.

In contrast to the current medical definition, the philosophical definition of medicine define suggests that it is a field that significantly explores the fundamental issues in research, theory, and practices with epistemological, health science, and metaphysics topics. The definition is a history rooted in ancient times that has been extended on scholarly discussions on the concepts of philosophy in medicine. Philosophy of medicine primarily focuses on values and ethics, but bioethics is considered a district domain and is not explored in the entry. Therefore, philosophical therapy forms the foundation of diverse debates within bioethics because they analyse vital components of medical practices that arise in concepts of diseases. Academic medicine is critical because it has contributed to the significance of the general philosophy of science, understanding of causation, explanation, and experimental over the application of scientific knowledge (Hutter et al., 2015). It also plays a pivotal role in discussing goals and methods with practice and research in health and medical science.

Depression and Suicide

Suicide is an essential question because different cultures approach it differently from place and time. It has been described among primitive and civilized people and the social attitude that is different from severe condemnation and acceptance of informal institutions. Most research studies suggest that suicide rejects the earlier endorsement of the moral of suicide. They are considered an offense against the highest power, for they adopt humanistic assumptions that are maladaptive, therefore illness. Suicide can be described as self-inflicted intentional death, which is a severe cause of mortality. Suicide in society should not be overlooked because It calls for awareness, for it may be regarded as a psychiatric emergency. The etiological factors of suicide are physical, social, and psychological factors, despite their being caused by multi-factors. Recurrent unresolved psychological stressors, chronic or terminal condition of medication, psychiatric disorders, and demographic characteristics are the significant risks associated with potential factors of suicide.

Suicide is associated with depression disorder related to the major cause of death in the globe among youth and adolescents. The major factor of the problem is social-biological and psychological disorders, although different factors increase suicidal attempts. In most cases, low-risk factors come from the educational environment and small family matters resulting in suicidal thoughts. The significant factors that ground people to attempting suicides are intensive stress and high tension. It is widespread with the university students, a young population that may experience adaptation of new standards of education, separation of families, and entrance to a new environment that may result in intensive stress and depression. Most researchers believe that depression results from the hopelessness that cuts the depths of their existence, resulting in suicidal thoughts (Potard et al., 2020). Personality characteristics are potential causes that cause suicidal thoughts because an individual may portray extroversion, impulsion, outside control, helplessness, and low self-esteem. An individual must encounter and adapt to the stressful and challenging situation to counter the pathological disorders and life problems for resiliency.

People choose suicide when facing a loss or fear of loss. For instance, being imprisoned or arrested, humiliation, bullying, cyberbullying, academic failure, losing a job, losing a family friend due to sexual orientation, financial problems, end of a romantic relationship, or back of close friendship. Hopelessness is also a significant cause because people feel they have lost all their hope and cannot change their situation. All the good things in life have been overshadowed, making suicide the viable option for them. Depressed people may not see that things will get better due to the despair and pessimism that accompanies illness. Feeling like a burden to others makes people commit suicide because they think their loved ones would be better off without their presence. They feel worthless and a commitment to others and are overwhelmed by the emotional burden they have within them. Social isolation may cause low self-esteem that may result in suicide due to loneliness which causes depression.

Arguments For and Against Depression and Suicide

Religion and Culture on Suicide

Religion plays a pivotal role in the identity of an individual and the critical components of their culture. Religion and culture are crucial because they act as protectors against emotional distress and precipitant. There is a complex and multi-facet between an individual’s mental health and religion and the relationship between spirituality and religion. Practicing emotional and psychological distress of explanatory models of an individual may strongly impact the religious values. Ritual and religious beliefs are critical because they buffer stress that may cause depression by providing elements of comfort to stressed-out people. However, it is vital to understand that the values and beliefs of a religion held by different people are inevitable since they impact seeking help and seeking from. Attitudes towards suicide and religions have changed over the past decades because cultures and societies are evolving. Collective organizations shift to ego-centric are contributed significantly to the increase of common mental disorder. That means that pathology presentations in patients have also changed. Suicidal behaviours and suicidal rates vary in different countries and over other times. It depends on several factors such as the use of law to punish acts of suicide in different countries; social factors such as unemployment and anomie may increase the rate of suicide. Individual and personal characteristics such as socio-demographic factors, gender, and age are considered. Some religious values and religions are significant causes of depression that may cause suicide, consent, capacity, and the need to merge. Therefore, religious affiliation means different things differentiated from rituals, beliefs, religiosity, and attitudes.

Christianity expresses different attitudes towards suicide. For instance, clergy in middle age believed that devil temptations caused suicidal ideation and thoughts. Individuals who committed suicide were buried away from the community, and their bodies were pierced with a stake, a symbol of protection against their evil souls. The attitude of Christianity has changed over the years with significant attribution to mental illness. Research studies show that Roman Catholicism effects of protective are identified slightly weaker in women. The findings show that suicidal poisoning raises with age them is not shocking because they encourage the relationship with protestant women and those with no religious affiliation (Gearing & Alonzo, 2018). The degree of commitment, spiritual practices, and role of gender to taboos, beliefs, and rituals should help create culturally appropriate intervention strategies. The protection offered by Catholicism Romanians of the older individuals is being changed over their trends and attitudes. Great changes have occurred to understand the mental suffering concerning the orthodox and catholic churches. For instance, abandonment of refusal practices of burying and punishing suicides, although suicide is still proscribed. It points out restrictive attitudes towards cases of suicides since it is considered very strict taboos. Hinduism religion is a way of life that has a philosophical view of life as reincarnation and a cycle in which attitude towards suicide is more liberal. For instance, acts of suicide in India are punishable by law. Islam also prohibits suicides and self-harm, meaning there will be decreased rates of choosing suicides. Under the harsh punishable law and circumstance, thinking of suicidal thoughts and ideation are artificially lower than other religions in India and Muslims. As a clinician, understanding cultural and religious value is vital to help individuals make their own decisions. Physical disorder and mental suffering play a significant role in deciding if an individual chooses suicide as the best option.

Existentialism and Absurdism

On the one hand, philosopher Soren and a Danish theologian coin the term existentialism. Soren suggests that existentialism is a rejection of all abstractive thinking, of scientific or logical philosophy. It begins as a voice that protesting against pure thought of absurdity, which is not logical because it is an intrinsic movement of being. Existentialists use existence to show the presence of humans. The key components believe that some things can exist. Existentialism describes and views man as a concentrated individual that can be existent. Existentialism standpoint emphasizes that existence is always individual or particular because it investigates the meaning of being, which means being studied around the problem of reality experienced within diverse capacities. Humans should make choices that they must defend themselves. Since it exists in the world, it depends on the situations that conditions or limit chooses. Existentialism pushes philosophy to connect to the experience and life of individuals. It should be worth living philosophically because it blends in the word of existence. Its philosopher emphasizes the inner experience of an individual because it is more authentic. Philosophers must develop individual internal knowledge and experience, which would be regarded as evidence. The personal experience of an individual is the belief of existentialism followed a philosophy of being. It is a philosophy of acceptance, attestation, and refusal to think of being and rationalization attempt. The principle of existentialism consists of God’s disbelief, subjectivity, anguish, choice of the ultimate evaluator, absurd, nothingness, and death.

On the other hand, Absurdism agrees to the world is inherently meaningless. It emphasizes the tension between constant struggles to find and an empty universe. The tension result is the significant cause that raises the absurd. Most people feel that they are immersed in the tension, and they seek to present them in three alternatives ways. They include denying the absurdity, kill themselves and taking refuge in religion, embrace the absurdity. Embracing the absurdity means that one takes the meaningless of the universe to make a difference to keep living and living well (Das, 2018). Absurd shows great effort concerning how to live and to counter the milestones of the indifferent cosmos and potential cold.

Utilitarianisms

            Western history, except the present century, views suicide as an act that has ethical significance, in which has moral praise or blame in the proper response that varied with time. Suicide in the Stoic era of Rome and Greece was praised as an act of moral responsibility of a wise man. In the era of medical Christians, it was viewed as a repressible sin. In the 19th century, the new scientific ethical view replaced the older ethical view. The new scientific world views suicide as a psychological and sociological condition in which people are not responsible for praise or blame appropriately. Suicide is under scrutiny and contemporary thinkers that support ethical consideration that applies to some case of attempted suicide and suicide. The issue is critical because it looks at the ethical foundation and examines ways in which contemporary theory of ethics treats suicide issues. The theories of contemporary ethics are dividing into utilitarians, includes contemporary and classical, and Kantians with their descendant deontology. Majoring on the utilitarian’s, it has consequentialists who assess the moral status of an act whose primary objective is to inspect the consequences and outcomes. Therefore, it makes the decision of things that would be good to do and the results that it would have if they are done. The basic view of utilitarianism suggests that it is wrong to commit suicide if will results in the destruction not only in life which benefits people, but also cause sorrow, anguish, financial, emotional, and social dis-benefits to people due to loss and deprivation. Utilitarianism prohibits suicide, accepts in rare cases where suicide is regarded as destructive and individual burdensome that pose a high risk in the constitution of the benefits of other people.

The philosophy of utilitarianism is nuanced and complex, with diverse literature and different schools full of complex strategies that respond to further elaborate criticism. Utilitarian suggest that any meaningful system of this should provide specific answers to use in our daily lives. That means that utilitarianism requires answers to all questions by balancing consequences and the capacity to distinguish the right and the wrongdoing. In such situations, classic utilitarianism provides a nod to what does give the greatest happiness and good. Utilitarianism begins with a consideration of the concrete action of an individual (Yang, 2017). Under the act of utilitarianism, everyone is bound to perform actions that result in the most good. The major problem of the show is that it provides a moral guide solely. Utilitarianism should set a limit to creating prohibition rather than supporting suicide. Even if a single action of suicide may yield good results, the logical rule of utilitarianism constitutes general parts of general practice. The practical argument against suicide suggests that if there is enough suicide so that it becomes a norm for opting out for countering difficulties, a high number of people will take the path. Studies suggest that suicide is not contagious and engender such a response of copycat.

Legality of Suicide

Historically, most countries had laws that punished people who attempted suicide, but today most nations have decriminalized suicide (Fahad, 2017). Most countries have laws that make it illegal to encourage, aid, or abet suicide. Punishment and the nature of the actions taken that are illegal vary greatly. Systems such as Islamic law, common law, and the law in places with civil and traditional law can easily be compared. Research shows the excellent variance in different countries that make it impossible to estimate the number of persons that are currently jailed for attempting suicides. However, jail sentences are given to an individual who attempts murder. Countries that have to decriminalize suicide attempts make attempters face prosecutions somebody else dies or is injured due to attempting suicide, encouraging and aiding illegal suicide. Discussing the roots of examining future change prospect and making suicide law shows how Canada’s invalidation of law makes it unlawful to help in cases of suicide of physically ill individuals who are abet with restrictive conditions that illustrate the trend of assisted suicide liberation. However, some nations have legal penalties for individuals who are stipulated to commit suicide. They may range from short imprisonment term or fines. Research studies show that the criminalization of suicides may hinder vulnerable individuals from seeking help and support. It is also evident that nations that punish people who attempt suicide do not show a lower rate of suicide.

Suicide over centuries has is regarded as a serious crime in the past ten centuries. As a result, the law was developed out of the law of Roman and church, which considered suicide as a grave offense. The England suicide was humiliated by being denied the Christian burial and confiscation of property. History shows that the state of America did not embrace the harshness of the England law towards suicide. They did not also adopt confiscation of property, and suicide was ignored in books of law. Therefore, they were no actions taken against the individuals who committed suicide or their property. Today, there are many arguments that suicide should be a civil right of an individual in which no one has the authority to interfere. It draws to the assumption of viewing suicide prospects in the rationale decision between quick death and extension of life.

Conclusion

Suicide is a complex issue with various causes at the contextual and individual levels. It is a multi-factorial and complex phenomenon with no date of validation biomarker to predict the behaviour of suicides. Suicide can be studied through various factors such as stressful events, neurobiology, personal, socio-cultural environment, and familiar history. It is an ongoing debate, particularly in medicine and law, because it calls for more research critical to the imagination and thoughts of suicide considering both ethical and practical concerns. Despite suicide being a multifaceted and complex problem, multidimensional strategies should prevent and treat suicide. Public view impacts the attitude towards suicidal behaviours because the survey shows strong public support and awareness for prevention and fills the gap of knowing how to take action.