Human agency
Anthony Stadlen
Copyright © Anthony Stadlen, 2004, 2020
(Letter in the Daily Telegraph, 3 May 2004)
SIR: Richard
Hornsby (Letters, Apr 28)
writes that ‘depression is a life-threatening illness with as high a
mortality rate as other life-threatening illnesses such as cancer’. This tries
to obscure the fact that suicide is a personal action. Instead, Mr Hornsby
tries to present depression as a ‘life-threatening illness’, like cancer, which has a ‘mortality
rate’.
Depression cannot ‘threaten life’ in the way that, for example, cancer can. Depression does
not have a mortality rate, although many depressed people take their own lives.
Suicide is
a personal, intentional action, not the natural-scientifically determined
result of an illness with a mortality rate. To present it in such mechanistic
terms as Mr Hornsby does is to corrupt the discussion of depression and
suicide, by seeking to place it outside the realm of human agency and
responsibility.
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