Author: nancyvalko

God Bless the Dedicated Marchers for Life

nancyvalko abortion

This year I was scheduled to go to Washington DC to speak at the Cardinal O’Connor Conference for Life at Georgetown University the day after the annual March for Life commemorating the tragic anniversary of the Roe v. Wade decision and the 58 million lives lost by abortion.

Unfortunately, my flight was cancelled because of the impending snowstorm. However, I did watch the proceedings live on the EWTN network and I salute all of you who marched, especially the hundreds of St. Louis ‘Right-to-Life’ teens who were unfortunately later  trapped in the east coast snow storm! See their story at http://fox2now.com/2016/01/22/hundreds-of-st-louis-right-to-life-teens-trapped-in-east-coast-snow-storm/

 

 

“Good” News about Dying in America?

nancyvalko assisted suicide, conscience rights, euthanasia, medical ethics

This month Medscape, a subscription news service for medical professionals, published the article “Good News about Dying in America” by Dr. George Lundberg. Dr. Lundberg is the former editor of the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA)  and editor-at-large of Medscape itself as well as a member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academies.

But the title “Good News about Dying in America” is ironic because this article is really a homage to the pro-death movement. In the article, Dr. Lundberg approvingly chronicles a recent history of the “right to die” movement in the US including the rise of legalized physician-assisted suicide and his part in it.

Although he writes that he is not looking forward to his own death, he maintains that

To accomplish medical and cultural change, one needs to work at the levels of moral beliefs and ethical standards with professional and individual leadership.Subsequent changes in state and federal laws and regulations may be needed. Economic drivers can move it along. But first, you have to get their attention.” (Emphasis added)

Dr. Lundberg congratulates himself for getting this attention started by publishing the anonymous 1988 JAMA article “It’s Over Debbie”  which Lundberg claims is a “factual tale of a caring physician using intravenous morphine to end the horrid pain-wracked life of a young woman with terminal ovarian cancer.”

However, when you read this short article, you read about a doctor in training who, under the cloak of anonymity, writes about being on call at a hospital and awakened in the middle of the night to see a patient he had never met before. He describes “a 20-year-old girl named Debbie was dying of ovarian cancer. She was having unrelenting vomiting apparently as the result of an alcohol drip administered for sedation.” He writes that her condition was“a cruel mockery of her youth and unfulfilled potential” but that Debbie’s only words to him were “Let’s get this over with”. An older, dark-haired woman staying with Debbie was assumed by the young doctor to be her mother.

Then, in the anonymous doctor’s own words, he writes :

The patient was tired and needed rest. I could not give her health, but I could give her rest. I asked the nurse to draw 20 mg of morphine sulfate into a syringe. Enough, I thought, to do the job. I took the syringe into the room and told the two women I was going to give Debbie something that would let her rest and to say good-bye. (Emphasis added)

After giving Debbie the the lethal overdose, the doctor writes:

I waited for the inevitable next effect of depressing the respiratory drive. With clocklike certainty, within four minutes the breathing rate slowed even more, then became irregular, then ceased. The dark-haired woman stood erect and seemed relieved.

Quite a different story from what Dr. Lundberg  proudly portrays as a caring act. Is the deliberate killing of a newly met patient without request, explanation or actual consent by a doctor in training really part of Dr. Lundberg’s  vision of “(t)he cultural change we need now is to allow death to occur when its time has come and to do so with dignity and without undue pain and suffering for the patient to the greatest extent possible?”

Dr. Lundberg writes further on other “breakthrough” moments in medicalized killing after the “It’s Over Debbie” article:

Next was Dr Timothy Quill and his disclosure in the New England Journal of Medicine in 1991 that he prescribed barbiturates at the request of a leukemia patient to allow her to end her life. Then, beginning in 1990, Dr Jack Kevorkian and his suicide machine assisted in the deaths of more than 100 patients; the right message writ large but by a deeply flawed messenger. (emphasis added)

As a medical professional myself, it is horrifying that such influential medical people not only have embraced the concept that it is acceptable and even compassionate to medically kill people, but now promote it.

And there is a jarring apparent lack of empathy and understanding of the challenges serious illness poses to patients and their families at the end of Dr. Lundberg’s article:

hospitals interested in their patient safety statistics might do well to note that much of what is chalked up as deaths related to medical error is actually occurring with the frail elderly, often in critical care units (CCUs). Many of these patients probably should not be in the CCU anyway. Maybe not even in hospitals. …. Help your safety statistics; let the dying die at home. (Emphasis added)

While Dr. Lundberg’s article is appalling to those of us who refuse to kill our patients or help them kill themselves, it is important for all of us to understand that many of our alleged “experts” are leading us into a cultural as well as medical and legal war over human extermination.

Some Canadian Veterinarians Offer to Teach Doctors about Euthanasia

nancyvalko assisted suicide, euthanasia, medical ethics

In February 2015, the Canadian Supreme Court unanimously voted to legalize physician-assisted suicide.  In September 2015, it was revealed that Canada’s Quebec province was preparing euthanasia kits with lethal injections for distribution to doctors for assisted suicide.

In December, Canada’s National Post published an article titled “‘We can definitely help’: What vets can teach doctors about assisted dying“ that reports:

Before every euthanasia, Dr. Amy Wilson prays things will go smoothly — that her patient will sedate well, that she’ll hit the vein with the catheter on the first try, that there will be no sudden, involuntary spasms or grunts for breath that can be agonizing for owners.
Wilson, like all veterinarians, is trained to put suffering animals to death as humanely as possible. She does it more often than she wishes she had to, but she does it well. Now, as Canada continues to debate the way forward on assisted dying, she and other vets say there is much they can teach doctors about a different kind of animal — humans

One argument long promulgated by assisted suicide/euthanasia proponents is that we should put people out of their misery just as we do for our pets.

However, pets become at risk for many reasons:

According to the American Humane Association, the most common reasons why people relinquish or give away their dogs is because their place of residence does not allow pets (29%), not enough time, divorce/death and behavior issues (10% each). The most common reasons for cats are that they were not allowed in the residence (21%) and allergies (11%).

Many are then taken to animal shelters. About twice as many animals enter shelters as strays compared to the number that are relinquished by their owners but nevertheless about 1/3 each year, approximately 2.7 million animals, are euthanized.

According to the website Petful, pets in animal shelters in the United States are euthanized every year for three major reasons: illness, aggression and overpopulation.

Regarding illness, the website states:

Because most shelters operate on tight budgets, the cost of treating every animal’s illness is impossibly high.Many shelters have veterinarians to prescribe medications and perform exams for sick animals, but the decision to euthanize must still be made sometimes after considering several factors:
•The severity of the illness
•The chance of recovery
•How infectious the disease is
•The cost of treatment
•The length of treatment
•The adoptability of the pet

Do we really want to adopt a veterinary standard that makes it acceptable to euthanize people as well as pets when illnesses are too expensive or  personalities are too difficult or simply when there are too many of them around?

Effects of Euthanasia on Veterinarians

Although the National Post article is generally supportive of veterinarians teaching doctors to perform euthanasia, it does document the emotional distress that can affect even veterinarians who perform euthanasia:

Studies suggest people whose jobs require them to kill animals are at risk of a phenomenon known as PITS – perpetration-induced traumatic stress. Euthanasia was one of the reasons Rothenburger (a veterinarian) chose to leave practice; she now specializes in pathology. When she used to perform euthanasia, “I put this filter on: This was ending suffering. That was the role I had to play. But it often wasn’t easy, and it’s hard to keep your professional persona on when you’re trying not to shake while you’re injecting the medication, or not cry with the owners until you’ve done your job.”

Studies have documented a higher suicide risk among vets than the general population. A 2010 survey by the Canadian Veterinary Medical Association found 19 per cent of those who responded had seriously thought about suicide, half reported experiencing burnout and 27 per cent were taking anti-depressants. Rothenburger belongs to a closed Facebook page called Not One More Vet. “It’s a safe place for vets to talk about things they need to get off their chest,” she says, “like compassion fatigue, and maybe that tough euthanasia.” (Emphasis added)

Many years ago, my adult children and I had to have our beloved cat Callie euthanized because of an inoperable cancer. We decided to stay with Callie throughout the procedure because we wanted to surround her with love until the end. However, the procedure had some unexpected difficulties and we all found the process stressful and incredibly sad.

When we left, I told my children that if anyone ever tried to euthanize me for any reason, they had better stop them.

People are not animals and they must not be treated like animals.

Do We Know Enough About Brain Death?

nancyvalko brain death, medical ethics, organ donation

Just last month, there were two major developments reported on the controversial issue of brain death. One was an article about a lawsuit to revoke the death certificate of Jahi McMath, a California teenager who was declared brain dead 2 years ago but is still alive and apparently showing some signs of improvement.

The other was a December 30, 2015 article in Medscape, a website for medical professionals that requires subscription, titled “Not All Hospital Brain Death Policies Comply With Guidelines” . The article reports on a medical journal study titled “Variability of Brain Death Policies in the United States.”

Jahi McMath

Jahi McMath, a 13-year-old girl, underwent a routine surgery for sleep apnea in December 2013 at a California children’s hospital. That night she started bleeding and eventually her heart stopped. Her heart was restarted and she was placed on a ventilator to stabilize her condition, but soon the doctors declared her brain dead and prepared to remove the ventilator. However, the family insisted that the ventilator be continued, hoping that Jahi might eventually get better.

The doctors disagreed, insisting that Jahi was legally dead by brain death criteria. The parents went to court to keep the doctors from removing her ventilator but after a series of legal battles lasting weeks, a judge eventually gave Jahi’s family permission to transfer her to another facility that would continue the ventilator.

Virtually all the ethicists and other experts contacted by most media outlets condemned the family’s actions as denying the reality of brain death. In a January 10, 2014 USA Today article, ethicist Arthur Caplan, head of the bioethics division at New York University’s Langone Medical Center, criticized the judge’s decision for Jahi’s family, declaring that Jahi’s new doctors are “trying to ventilate and otherwise treat a corpse,” Caplan said. “She is going to start to decompose.”

Now, 2 years after Jahi was declared brain dead, her family is in federal court suing to revoke her death certificate because as their experts contend

“At this time, Jahi does not fulfill California’s statutory definition of death, which requires the irreversible absence of all brain function, because she exhibits hypothalamic function and intermittent responsiveness to verbal commands.”

A future ruling revoking Ms. McMath’s death certificate would be groundbreaking.

“Variability of Brain Death Policies in the United States.”

In this December 28, 2013 Journal of the American Medical Association Neurology article, a study was done of 508 US hospital policies on brain death determination.

Alarmingly, the article states that hospital brain death criteria requirements “are not 100% compliant” even with updated 2010 guidelines by the American Academy of Neurology which require only one examination to determine brain death.

And of the total 508 hospitals, the article states that only

“about a third of policies (33.1%) required specialist expertise in neurology or neurosurgery, but 150 policies had no mention of who could perform the determination. Many policies still allow for more junior physicians to determine brain death, the authors noted.” (Emphasis added)

Also disturbing, the article noted that some policies didn’t require testing of lower brainstem function (required for a finding of irreversible loss of all brain functions) with less than 80% of the policies requiring the absence of a cough reflex. Only 57.2% of hospital brain death policies required that oxygen be given to maintain oxygenation during the critical apnea test to determine if a patient can take breaths off a ventilator, even though low a low oxygen level can lead to more brain damage.

In an effort to reassure, Gene Sung, MD, past-president, Neurocritical Care Society, and director, Division of Neurocritical Care and Stroke at UCLA claims that he

agreed that there have there have been no documented reports of regaining function after a declaration of brain death. “But still, we don’t know for sure; maybe mistakes happened and they weren’t reported,” he said. (Emphasis added)

Actually, there have been multiple reported cases of people regaining at least some function after a brain death declaration such as Zach Dunlap (who fully recovered) as well as Jahi McMath.

If as Dr Greer, the lead author of the study, states “This is one of those diagnoses where we need to be correct 100% of the time”, must we not rigorously examine such cases to determine if or why there was a misdiagnosis to ensure that current brain death guidelines really hold up to scrutiny?

Besides the potential premature loss of lives, our medical integrity is at stake and we medical professionals must prove worthy of the trust society gives us.

“What Kind of Mother is 8 Months Pregnant and Wants an Abortion?”

nancyvalko abortion, disability, euthanasia, family, grief, medical ethics, prenatal testing

Just after Christmas, the popular fast news website Yahoo News published the article “What Kind of Mother Is 8 Months Pregnant and Wants an Abortion?”  “as an example of one of our best of 2015.” (emphasis added)

In this story, an anonymous woman called “Kate”, a married mother of one daughter, found out at almost 8 months that her unborn second daughter had Dandy-Walker Syndrome, a genetic disorder that can result in mental and physical disabilities. A subsequent test was said to show severe brain abnormalities.

Kate, now an administrator of the website “Ending a Wanted Pregnancy” which includes a Poor Prenatal Diagnosis Index, decided to have an abortion-for her unborn daughter’s sake. Adoption and keeping the baby were mentioned as options but were rejected by Kate without explanation.

As Kate relates her story:

The doctor said, “We expect your baby to have moderate to severe mental retardation; she’s going to have moderate to severe physical disability; she is probably never going to walk or talk; she will possibly never be able to lift her head; she is going to have seizures all of the time… (and) Babies like this one are not generally comfortable enough to sleep.”

In that moment, I had to shift my thinking. I was hoping for special ed, and had been focusing on questions like: How much should you save to know your special-needs daughter will be OK after you die? I was thinking about long-term care and mild to moderate disability. Instead, I had to think about a baby who was probably not going to live very long, and the longer she lived, the more pain she would be in. That realization – that I was more scared of her living than of her dying — is what made the choice for me.

Kate then tells how difficult and expensive ($25,000) it was to find an abortionist to perform such a late abortion. Kate’s doctor eventually found one in Colorado, far from Kate’s home in Boston and Kate endured a four day abortion procedure.

Kate relates the procedure:

The whole first day was counseling and testing to make sure it was safe to do the procedure. They want to make sure you completely understand what is going to happen and that no one is pressuring you into the decision. At the end of the day, I signed all the paperwork, and the doctor injected the baby with a drug that, over a few hours, slowed her heart to still. It was a very, very difficult day. Euthanizing the baby is, obviously, a very hard thing to do. (emphasis added)

On the fourth day, labor was induced and Kate delivered her dead daughter.

Kate’s 2 year old daughter cried when Kate told her that her expected sister was “gone”. Three years after the abortion, Kate says

Now, every six months or so, we talk about it again — her understanding of it evolves as she grows. At this point, she knows the baby died because she was sick in a way the doctors couldn’t fix, because she had holes in her brain, and you need your whole brain to be healthy.

Kate’s story was obviously meant to generate sympathy for a distraught mother and thus show why abortion should continue to be legal. However, the shocking description of the third trimester abortion and the continued effect on the mother and sister undermine the narrative that abortion is the best option in such a difficult situation.

ANOTHER SIDE TO THE LATE-TERM ABORTION DECISION

Personally, I know what it is like to be told that your baby has severe problems and might die. I was told just a short time after my daughter Karen was born that she had an inoperable heart defect and would live just “2 weeks to 2 months.” I know the panic and fear that mothers like Kate must feel but in my case, as in many others, the doctor turned out to be  wrong about her terminal diagnosis.

Although my Karen later died of complications from pneumonia before her open heart surgery, I treasure the almost 6 months we had together and I have no regrets.

Today, I also have a wonderful stepdaughter who has Turner’s Syndrome, one of the conditions listed in the Poor Prenatal Diagnosis Index on the  “Ending a Wanted Pregnancy” website, and she is now a kind, generous woman who has no mental or physical disabilities.

In both these cases, abortion would have “solved” nothing.

Unfortunately, stories like Kate’s are desperately discouraging to women and families facing a difficult prenatal diagnosis. Tragically, the article also ignores the help and resources available to help such children and their families.

For example, the article does not mention groups like local Birthright centers and the website Prenatal Partners for Life which is “dedicated to providing families, either expecting, or those who have had, a child with special needs or a life limiting condition, the support, information, and encouragement they need to make informed decisions involving their preborn or newborn child’s care.” There are also support and information websites for specific conditions like the Dandy-Walker Alliance , the condition that Kate’s baby had.

And anyone who reads pro-life news sites such as Life News  and NRL News Today  has read many inspiring stories of hope and even unexpected happiness when a woman chooses life for her baby despite a difficult or even terminal diagnosis.

These and other other websites also contain information about Project Rachel, an organization that helps women, men and even families to heal after abortion.

CONCLUSION

I am not writing this blog to condemn Kate or other women who have had abortions. My heart goes out to them and I wish I could have had a chance to personally offer help, options, encouragement and information. I consider these women as additional victims of the abortion mentality that has so infected our society.

However, I do have a problem with abortion supporters who use such tragic stories to garner sympathy and support for their political agenda of legal abortion at any time for any reason and paid for by taxpayers as “reproductive health”.

Women and their babies deserve better.

Miracle Baby Comes Home for Christmas

nancyvalko brain injury, end-of-life, medical ethics, Uncategorized

Francesca and Lee Moore-Williams held their beautiful 18 month old daughter Bella’s hand as her ventilator was turned off and they waited for her death. But just 30 minutes later, Bella awoke  “kicking and screaming” according to the UK’s Mirror newspaper article “Miracle baby whose life support was turned off home for Christmas”. Five months later, she is scheduled to come home this Christmas.

Bella’s health became a concern in April when clumps of her hair fell out. Three months later, she took a turn for the worse and was admitted to a hospital in critical condition. Doctors told the parents that a MRI scan showed abnormalities on both sides of her brain and at some point, the decision was made to turn off the ventilator supporting her breathing.

According to the Mirror article:

She was later diagnosed with the genetic disorder Biotinidase deficiency, which is so rare it affects just one in every 60,000 births.

Sufferers of the condition do not produce enough biotin – a vitamin which is essential for healthy cell growth.

The deficiency can be fatal if left untreated but will now be managed safely with tablets.

And today:

Bella, of Clacton-on-Sea, Essex, who turns two in January, is now learning to walk and talk and her hair is growing back.

Experts say she is around eight months behind other children her age but she is expected to catch up.

Francesca said: “She’s at nursery and to look at her you wouldn’t think she’s been through what she has.

Perhaps this Christmas “miracle” also holds a message about the need for hope and humility for those of us in the medical professions.

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to all!

 

 

Contraception and Informed Consent

nancyvalko family planning, medical ethics

My late grandmother always told me “Never discuss religion, politics or sex”. Contraception can touch on all three of these topics and birth control itself can usually be counted on to arouse strong and conflicting opinions in any group.

However, contraception is crucially also a medical issue. With a range of contraceptive options and so many contrary claims about benefits and risks, it is essential for everyone, especially women and girls, to know the facts when they have to make a decision.

As Dr. David J. Hilger writes in his December 2015 article titled “Contraception and Informed Consent-Women Need a Full Account of the Risks”, the first oral contraceptive was marketed in 1960 and

“Despite early indications of severe and sometimes life-threatening risks, oral contraceptives were quickly approved and widely accepted. It was not until after oral contraception was widely utilized that many of the medical risks were published. Information regarding risk continues to be discovered and is reported in the medical literature, but it is not widely publicized.”

What I appreciated about this article was that it contained not only the latest information on some of the medical risks of oral contraceptives but also the latest research in Natural Family Planning, a routinely overlooked topic even in a doctor’s office or clinic. It is essential for women to know all the options, risks and benefits when making a birth control decision to have truly informed consent.

MY JOURNEY

As a nurse, I thought I was well-informed about contraception when I started using the Pill in 1974. At that time, all I knew about side effects was the risk of weight gain which I experienced myself when I almost could not fit into my wedding dress! I stopped 18 months later when my husband, a doctor, read medical journal articles about the increased risks of blood clots with the Pill

I never used hormonal birth control again and I eventually learned and practiced Natural Family Planning which worked great for me in both conceiving and postponing pregnancy.

It was many years later when I discovered more information about contraceptives in medical journal articles about the possible post-fertilization (abortifacient) effects , increased risk of depression or, most ironically, increased risk of sexual dysfunction. For me, the knowledge of the possible abortifacient effect alone would have kept me from ever using hormonal contraception.

In recent years but rarely mentioned in the media, there has also been many  birth control lawsuits filed against a number of different kinds of birth control pills and devices.

CONCLUSION

My children and especially my daughters, gave me even more incentive to research the facts when their public schools gave sex education classes and I discovered glaring lapses and inaccuracies. For example, condoms were promoted as safe sex even though a Centers for Disease Control fact sheet admits that

“However, condom use cannot provide absolute protection against any STD.”

Another example is that Natural Family Planning was ignored in favor of a negative depiction of the old “rhythm method”.

In the end, I believe that birth control is not a decision to be taken lightly and that women of all ages have the right to know the potential risks and options. I only wish I had known more myself in 1974.

All I Want For Christmas Is…..A Kidney

nancyvalko organ donation

All I want for Christmas is a kidney but not for me. I want it for my wonderful daughter-in-law Bernie, short for Bernadette.

Bernie Valko had a kidney transplant when she was 15 years old after a birth complication damaged her kidneys and almost cost her life. For almost 17 years, Bernie did well with her new kidney, went to college and became an occupational therapist.

In September 2012, Bernie was set to marry my son Steve when her transplanted kidney failed the night before their wedding. Bernie told my son that, under the circumstances, they could cancel the wedding. Instead my son said his only regret was not marrying her sooner! No one knew before the wedding except family members. Nevertheless, Steve and Bernie’s wedding was a joyous occasion, although their honeymoon had to be postponed indefinitely.

Three days later, Bernie became very ill and was hospitalized. Dialysis was finally started but difficulties arose. Despite this, Bernie kept working as much as possible. Currently, she has dialysis 3 days a week and works three days a week. As a former dialysis nurse myself, I know that most dialysis patients are unable to work. However, Bernie is a trooper and even volunteers at their St. Louis, Mo. parish.

Bernie desperately needs a transplant. She needs a donor with an O+ blood type for a living donor transplant because such kidneys last almost twice as long and avoid the ethical concerns with other transplants.

Becoming a living kidney donor is not a decision to be made lightly. Information on becoming a living kidney donor is online at http://www.barnesjewish.org/become-a-kidney-transplant-living-donor . Bernie is now at the top of the Barnes Jewish Hospital waiting list.

In the meantime, Bernie and Steve also started a Facebook page “Find a Kidney for Bernie” with pictures and contact information if you or someone you know with an O+ blood type would like to be tested for a living kidney donation to Bernie.

Mass Shootings and Mental Illness

nancyvalko culture, family, marriage, mental health, Planned Parenthood

The rash of recent mass shootings is alarming, especially the most recent mass shooting in San Bernardino following so quickly after the Colorado Planned Parenthood one. Now, people are not only talking about mental illness as in the Planned Parenthood shooting but also the existence of evil as in the apparent terrorist attack in San Bernardino.

Can mental illness and evil be totally separate issues? I confess I don’t know the answer to this.

But I do know that our mental health system needs vast improvement from my own personal experiences.

My first husband and the father of my children was a brilliant, caring psychiatrist whose articles were published in medical journals. When I left bedside nursing to start our family, we had a plan for me to eventually join his private practice to specifically support the families of his patients. We both believed that families were ideally the best support system for people with mental illness and we hoped that such a plan would lead to better outcomes and help keep families together. Communication was key.

However, while our children were still small, my husband started slowly succumbing to severe mental illness himself despite treatment. I was frantic to help but at that time in the 1980s and even without the current HIPPA privacy rules, I was unable to get much information about his condition or how to help him from his psychiatrist even when there were multiple hospitalizations.

As his condition deteriorated, I was told by his psychiatrist that there was nothing I could do or not do to help the situation and that he was handling the situation. Then he told me that I should consider divorce for the sake of our children.

Since I believe in the sanctity of the marriage vows, especially the part about “in sickness and in health”, I soldiered on and got second and even third opinions for my husband. Nothing helped very much and I was still shut out from comprehensive discussion of treatment plans.

My husband finally abandoned our family and I reluctantly had to file for divorce. However, I still wanted to help him.

My now ex-husband eventually went on total disability for mental illness but since mental institutions were closed decades before for “less restrictive” measures, he became homeless and eventually shuffled from one assisted living facility to another until his death in 2014.

When our oldest daughter started using drugs at 14, I ran into many of the same problems with the mental health community. Even though she was a minor, she had the right to  “confidential health services”. This came about because it is thought that minors will be more likely to seek help from a doctor if confidentiality-even from parents- is assured in matters like sex and drugs. Unfortunately, as in my case, that meant that I could be mostly kept in the dark when it came to helping my child. I could pay for rehab but I couldn’t get much information or direction about helping my daughter. I contacted mental health organizations and tried to research support groups on my own with mixed results. My daughter died by suicide using an assisted suicide technique in 2009 when she was 30 years old.

We now have “mental health parity” under Obamacare which was intended to make mental health care better by increasing coverage. However, a recent Washington Post op-ed titled “The problem with Obamacare’s mental-health ‘parity’ measure”  shows how difficult it can still be for family or friends to get help for someone with a mental illness.

Mass shootings get our attention about gun control and terrorism issues but the mental health care crisis goes on. We need to do a better job and I still believe that mental health care must try to include and help the whole family for better long-term outcomes.

New Study: Suicide Contagion and Legalized Physician-Assisted Suicide

nancyvalko assisted suicide, bereavement, suicide

 

Even before my 30 year old daughter Marie died by suicide in 2009 using an assisted suicide technique, I was writing and giving talks on physician-assisted suicide (PAS) for years. Even then, I worried about effect of the mainstream media portraying PAS as a civil right and even “courageous”, especially since the existence of suicide contagion aka “copycat suicides” was well known. I was not surprised when after Marie’s death, at least two people close to her became suicidal. Thankfully, they were saved by treatment.

Now we have even more information about this from a Southern Medical Journal a medical journal article that was published at the same time Governor Brown signed the California’s PAS law. In the study “How Does Legalization of Physician-Assisted Suicide Affect Rates of Suicide?” , researchers meticulously examined suicide rates in Washington and Oregon after those states passed PAS laws.

The results are shocking. In those states, the researchers found a 6.3% increase in total suicide with a larger increase (14.5%) among individuals 65 or older. Moreover, there was no decrease in nonassisted suicides (people taking their own lives), despite the claims of PAS advocates that legalizing PAS would reduce the overall number of nonassisted suicides. Instead, the researchers found that “Rather, the introduction of PAS seemingly induces more self-inflicted deaths than it inhibits.”

On November 20, 2015, the Washington Post newspaper published an excellent op-ed article titled “The Dangerously Contagious Effect of Assisted-Suicide Laws “ by Dr. Aaron Kheriaty, an associate professor of psychiatry and head of the medical ethics program at the University of California at Irvine. Citing the medical journal study, Dr. Kheriaty concludes that:

“Debates about physician-assisted suicide raise broad questions about our societal attitudes toward suicide. Recent research findings on suicide rates press the question: What sort of society do we want to become? Suicide is already a public health crisis. Do we want to legalize a practice that will worsen this crisis?”

Is Suicide Really a Public Health Crisis?

The national Centers for Disease Control website reports the following statistics in a section titled “Suicide and Suicide Attempts Take an Enormous Toll on Society”. Here are some excerpts:

• Suicide is the 10th leading cause of death among Americans
• More than 40,000 people died by suicide in 2012
• More than 1 million people reported making a suicide attempt in the past year.
• More than 2 million adults reported thinking about suicide in the past year.
• Most people who engage in suicidal behavior never seek mental health services.

Costs to Society
The following estimates are based on 2010 CDC data and refer to people age 10 and over.
• Suicide costs society over $44.6 billion a year in combined medical and work loss costs.
• The average suicide costs $1,164,499. (Emphasis in original)

The toll on survivors, family member or friends of a person who died by suicide is also enormous, as I can personally attest:

• Surviving the loss of loved one to suicide is a risk factor for suicide.
• Surviving family members and close friends are deeply impacted by each suicide and experience a range of complex grief reactions including, guilt, anger, abandonment, denial, helplessness, and shock

.
Fighting Suicide Contagion

It is tragic that suicide prevention organizations ignore the PAS issue and the mainstream media is almost uniformly sympathetic to the PAS movement despite World Health Organization and national media guidelines for suicide reporting. This has allowed PAS groups like Compassion and Choices not only to press harder for universal PAS laws but also to even change the names of such laws to euphemisms such as “End of Life Options” or “Death with Dignity” to disguise the fact that physician- assisted suicide is obviously suicide.

However, Dr. Kheriaty in his Washington Post article also talks about a related phenomenon called the Papageno effect that:

“suggests that coverage of people with suicidal ideation who do not attempt suicide but instead find strategies that help them to cope with adversity is associated with decreased suicide rates.”

I have always maintained that our stories as suicide survivors, people with disabilities or terminal illnesses, etc. offer hope and inspiration while those about PAS promote despair and hopelessness. We need to tell our stories publicly.

All of us and especially people in states that are currently targeted by groups like Compassion and Choices for legalization of PAS, need to know and share the real facts about PAS as well as suicide prevention and treatment, including the national suicide hotline number (1 (800) 273-8255) and website (www.suicidepreventionlifeline.org).  Suicide prevention and treatment can work whether people are considering PAS or killing themselves.

Addendum: Ironically, just as I was finishing this blog, I was interrupted by a call from a man living in another state with an incurable, disabling condition. He was referred to me last month when he saw a segment on a celebrity’s suicide involving the same condition and decided that he wanted to go to California to use the newly passed PAS law. I talked to this man for quite some time.

I was elated when this gentleman now told me that the resources I recommended, the people he talked to and even just the fact that someone cared did change his mind and he no longer wants to end his life. He said he now wants to start actually living again.

This man’s story shows why we must not discriminate between suicide and physician-assisted suicide when it comes to suicide prevention and treatment.