Rational Suicide and the Right to Die

. . . We applaud the growing attention to the right to die, rational, and physician-assisted suicide. We believe, however, that attention the effects of psychiatric illness on rational decision making is notably from the debate. Furthermore, research and our clinical work have it clear to us that many doctors on the front lines, who would be for implementing any policy that allowed assisted suicide, are ill to assess the presence and effect of depressive illness in older. In the absence of that sophisticated understanding, the of a suicidal person's "rationality" can be no more than, subject to the influence of personal biases about aging, old age, the psychological effects of chronic disease. . . .