The Right to Be Protected from Committing Suicide

Description

This book argues that suicidal people have the right to receive treatment and for reasonable steps to be taken that they are protected from killing themselves. Those suffering threats to life from mental health issues deserve the same protection as those who face threats to life from ill health or violence from others. The book explores the ethical and legal case for giving those beset with suicidal thoughts the treatment they need and for reasonable steps to be taken to prevent them attempting suicide. Debates around suicide tend to be dominated by cases involving those with terminal medical conditions seeking assisted dying. But of those wishing to die, it is far more common to find middle aged men and young people oppressed by mental health and personal problems. Too often the woeful failure in the funding of mental health services in the UK means that suicidal people are denied the support and help they desperately need. This ground-breaking book makes the legal and ethical case for recognising that the state and public authorities have a duty to provide and implement an effective suicide prevention strategy.

Jonathan Herring is the DW Wolf-Clarendon Fellow in Law at Exeter College and Professor of Law at the Faculty of Law, University of Oxford.

A characteristically thoughtful and elegant development of the legal and ethical case for treating those with suicidal thoughts, and the taking of reasonable steps to prevent them attempting suicide [the book is] a stimulating, important, and nuanced contribution to an area which can sometimes all too easily be portrayed in unhelpfully crude terms. -- Alex Ruck Keene * International Journal of Mental Health and Capacity Law *