by Harry Burlington

Created on: August 19, 2009

Is suicide a personal right?

The issue of suicidal rights belonging to the person is a difficult, but answerable question to make. When a person emotional well-being is shot, their mental health has degraded severely, and they're at the point of not wanting to live another moment, who can stop them?

Being a person who knows this subject very deeply and personally, due to my struggles with suicide, from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder after coming home from the Iraq War. I know what it's like to be at that point where the only option is to give up and take your own life. I've thought of hundreds of reasons that leaving life would make everything better, for me, my family, and society in general.

I've attempted suicide twice, both times with a gun, and both times pulling the trigger. The first time the safety was on and I was so drunk and uncoordinated, that my wife found me before I could find the safety button on the pistol. The second time, drunk again, I kicked the trigger of my shotgun and pushed the safety over to safe and the trigger locked. I took that as a sign to get help and called 911.

The belief that suicide will make the pain go away was changed in my thinking through a seven week counseling program. I spent time with other veterans, who were going through the same issues as I was, and then started to get a realization that I am important and belong here. Taking my own life would only make so much more pain for others and is selfish in so many ways.

Although, I stated the belief now that suicide isn't a viable option, I do believe that when the time is wrong, certain conditions exist, and the intention is very real that the personal right to commit suicide rests on the person, not anyone else. Being alone, having substance abuse problems, and being afflicted with a mental illness with the adequate means of ending life are not going to be anyone else's problem, unless the person needing help, reaches out for help.

I do not believe suicidal attempts are cries for help because the attempt was made to end life and society, especially the mental health professionals, need to understand that mental pain is very serious and just cannot be solved through prescriptions or thirty-minute counseling sessions. Whether the person is mentally ill, due to hereditary, war, or other trauma, the thought of suicide will never go away, but the actions of suicide can be helped.

In the mid-1950's, a Navy Admiral from WWII and Korean Wars, found out that he had been wearing an incorrect medal that was not awarded to him. He put on his Navy Dress White's walked out of his house, stood on his doorstep and shot himself with his .45 pistol. That is a true story and was his personal right to make.

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