INTRODUCTION
1. I use the term Mad with a capital letter to refer to the resignified positive label used by psychiatric consumers, survivors, ex-patients, or mental-health service users who reclaim madness. The term is generally used in Mad studies and by Mad scholars, as well as by Mad people and within Mad movements. When I use the term mad with no capital letter, it generally refers to the dominant way of describing madness from a medical/psychiatric perspective.
2. S. Corr, a nonbinary person, gave me their permission to quote them here.
3. The expressions anti-oppressive social movements/fields of study and anti-oppression activists/scholars refer to social movements, such as the women’s, trans, and disability/crip/Mad movements, to name but a few; related fields of study, such as feminist, trans, and disability/crip/Mad studies; and the activists and scholars involved in these anti-oppression circles. Activism and scholarship tend to be strongly intertwined in these fields—hence the expression activists/scholars. On anti-oppressive practice, see LeFrançois, Menzies, and Reaume (2013, 334).
4. Giorgio Agamben (1998) is the first to propose the notion of “thanatopolitics.” I discuss in Chapter 5 his usage and the definition provided by Stuart J. Murray (2006, 2018) that I retain in this book.
5. For definitions of assisted suicide practices (e.g., voluntary active euthanasia, physician-assisted suicide, or removal of life-sustaining treatments), see Downie (2004), Young (2014), and Quill and Sussman (2020).
6. While I do not develop the religious aspect in the book due to space limitations, it is worth mentioning that suicidism works through religious norms, injunctions, and practices that deeply influence not only suicidal people but also their families. For example, one of my friends, whose parents are Catholic and for whom religion and spirituality occupy an important place in their life, told me that discriminatory practices occurred in her religious community when her aunt and her brother died by suicide. Her mother had to fight for her sister who died by suicide to have a funeral like any other, as the priest initially refused certain practices, such as escorting the coffin from the church to the cemetery. When my friend’s brother died by suicide in the 2000s, the priest refused to open the casket at the ceremony. I invite readers interested in religion and suicide to consult Battin (2005, 2015) and Cholbi (2017). I want to thank my friend who authorized me to use these two concrete examples, as well as one anonymous reviewer of this book, for having pointed out my initial oversight about the religious aspects of suicidism.
7. I want to thank Scott J. Fitzpatrick for his invaluable input and our email exchanges regarding the similarities and differences between injunction and imperative. Fitzpatrick reminded me that, in many contexts, the notion of injunction is strongly linked to legal obligation and explained that he prefers to use the notion of imperative in his work. My usage of injunction here is broad and refers to an authoritative order and a moral, social, and political obligation. In that sense, I regard injunction and imperative as synonyms.
8. I define later my queercrip model of assisted suicide, but I would like to mention here that this queercrip model is inspired by queercrip approaches developed by such activists/scholars as Sandahl (2003), McRuer (2006, 2018), Kafer (2013), Day (2021), and Hall (2021). For definitions of queer and crip perspectives, see Hall (2017a).
9. Silverman and I (2019, 12) have coined the term cogniticism and defined it as “an oppressive system that discriminates against people with cognitive/mental disabilities. [ . . . ] Cogniticism is effective at multiple levels, including political, social, medical, legal, economic, and normative levels.”
10. I prefer a spelling without hyphens, like the term autotheory.
CHAPTER 1
1. Other examples include the former managing editor of The Walrus, Graeme Bayliss (2016); the artist, musician, writer, and academic Vivek Shraya (2017); and Lambda literary award–winning writer, artist, and activist Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha (2018).
2. In January 2020, I performed a Google search for suicidism. This research revealed that the term originated in the previous century and, aside from a few exceptions, does not circulate widely. Additionally, it has never been used in the sense described here before I started using it in 2016–2017.
3. For example, see East, Dorozenko, and Martin (2019); Radford, Wishart, and Martin (2019); Tack (2019); White and Morris (2019); Fitzpatrick (2020); Jaworski (2020); White (2020b); LeMaster (2022); and Krebs (2022).
4. I thank one of the anonymous reviewers of this book for inviting me to elaborate on the cultural and historical contextualization of suicide and for providing me with relevant references on that subject.
5. For more information on the historical treatment of suicide, see MacDonald (1989); Szasz (1999); Tierney (2006, 2010); BayatRizi (2008); Houston (2009); Cellard, Chapdelaine, and Corriveau (2013); Hecht (2013); Beattie and Devitt (2015); Battin (2015); Corriveau et al. (2016); and Perreault, Corriveau, and Cauchie (2016).
6. It is also essential to consider the importance, during the same period, of the development of new medical technologies and institutions (such as asylums) to diagnose and treat suicidal people (e.g., Brian 2016). I would like to thank one of the anonymous reviewers of this book for their invitation to better contextualize the emergence of the medical model, as well as the emergence of the social model presented in the next section, and for providing me with relevant references to elaborate on this contextualization.
7. See also Kouri and White (2014).
8. See also Van Orden et al. (2010) and Joiner et al. (2016).
9. See, for example, Jaworski (2010, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2020); Marsh (2010a, 2010b, 2015, 2018, 2020a, 2020b); Fitzpatrick (2011, 2015, 2020); Cover (2012, 2016a, 2016b); White (2012, 2015a, 2015b, 2016, 2017, 2020); Taylor (2014); Fitzpatrick, Hooker, and Kerridge (2015); Mills (2015, 2018, 2020); White et al. (2016a); Hjelmeland and Knizek (2017, 2020); and Button and Marsh (2020).
10. On biopower and biopolitics, see Foucault (1976, 1994, 1997, 2001, 2004a, 2004b).
11. I invite readers interested in Durkheim’s analysis to read his work or that of authors who discuss it, such as Douglas (1967); BayatRizi (2008); Jaworski (2014); Taylor (2014); Beattie and Devitt (2015); Fitzpatrick, Hooker, and Kerridge (2015); Manning (2020); or Kral (2019). Wray, Colen, and Pescosolido (2011) propose an interesting history of sociological theories on suicide, including those they qualify as “pre-Durkheimian” and “post-Durkheim” theories.
12. On copycat suicides and suicide “contagion,” see also Wray, Colen, and Pescosolido (2011) and Kral (2019).
13. While often categorized as medical/psychological due to its emphasis on individual factors in suicidality, the “interpersonal theory of suicide” (Joiner 2005) mobilizes the multiple factors listed by the World Health Organization to explain suicidality. In that sense, it could also be considered a theory belonging to the public health model. However, as Hjelmeland and Knizek (2020) demonstrate in their critique of that theory, individual factors are considered the key elements explaining suicidality, thus placing that theory within the medical model.
14. On agency, see also Chandler (2019, 2020a) and Krebs (2022).
15. For example, see the following authors who use the expression critical suicide studies: Tatz and Tatz (2019), White and Morris (2019), Marsh (2020b), Jaworski and Marsh (2020), White (2020b), Marsh and colleagues (2021), and Ansloos and Peltier (2021). I have personally hesitated between using critical suicidology and critical suicide studies. I have decided on the former for various reasons, including the fact that key volumes in the field, such as the one by White and colleagues (2016a), use the phrase critical suicidology in their title. The future will reveal which expression is favored in the field. I believe that both expressions articulate the spirit of the activists/scholars working in this area.
16. See, for example, Spivak (1988), Canetto (1992), Gill (1992, 1999), Fullagar (2003), Dorais and Lajeunesse (2004), Halberstam (2010), Kalish and Kimmel (2010), Bauer et al. (2013), and Puar (2013).
17. See, for example, Jaworski (2010, 2014); Marsh (2010a, 2010b); Cover (2012); White (2012); Chrisjohn, McKay, and Smith (2014); and Taylor (2014).
18. See, for example, Fitzpatrick (2015, 2016a, 2016b, 2020); Fitzpatrick, Hooker, and Kerridge (2015); Jaworski (2015, 2016, 2020); Marsh (2015, 2016, 2018, 2020a, 2020b); Broz and Münster (2015); Button (2016); Cover (2016a, 2016b, 2020); McDermott and Roen (2016); White et al. (2016a); White (2017, 2020a, 2020b); Bastien and Perreault (2018); Mills (2017, 2018, 2020); Chandler (2019, 2020a, 2020b); Button and Marsh (2020b); and Hjelmeland and Knizek (2020).
19. Marsh (2015, 2016) and Button (2016, 2020) offer summaries of the characteristics of both fields. I have established those six features of that field based on a synthesis of those texts and the following readings: Kouri and White (2014); Fitzpatrick, Hooker, and Kerridge (2015); White et al. (2016a); Mills (2018); White and Morris (2019); Fitzpatrick (2020); and White (2020a, 2020b).
20. The “political approach to suicide” and the “social justice approach to suicide” are synonyms, according to Button (2016, 2020), Button and Marsh (2020, 5), and Marsh (2020, 15).
21. See, for example, Cover (2012, 2016a), Taylor (2014), Jaworski (2015), Marsh (2015, 2016), Button (2016, 2020), Reynolds (2016), White et al. (2016a), Chandler (2019, 2020a, 2020b), Button and Marsh (2020), Ansloos and Peltier (2021), and Yue (2021).
22. I discuss Bee Scherer’s position in Chapter 2. While they argue that suicide is a form of self-completed homicide, Scherer proposes a different conclusion and accepts the possibility of suicide. See also Staples and Widger (2012) on the term suicide as a misnomer that focalizes on the self (sui-).
23. Regarding these recommendations, see also Dyck (2015) and Dorais and Lajeunesse (2004, 90–119).
24. While the notion of “ghosts” bears some resemblance to “Black Feminist Hauntology” (Saleh-Hanna 2015), which refers to the history of colonialism, racism, slavery, and the deaths these oppressions have caused, my usage here is more limited. My usage of this expression refers to the idea that something is present but is simultaneously elusive and difficult to describe in an intelligible way. Suicidism is like a ghost that is present in the various models of suicidality.
25. Some authors—for example, Marsh (2010b); Bastien and Perreault (2018); Chandler (2019, 2020a); East, Dorozenko, and Martin (2019); Radford, Wishart, and Martin (2019); Broer (2020); Fitzpatrick (2020); Jaworski (2020); White (2020a, 2020b); Fitzpatrick et al. (2021); and Krebs (2022)—have started questioning the harm done to suicidal people. However, they do not propose, as I do, assisted suicide for suicidal people.
26. See, for example, Dorais and Lajeunesse (2004), Reynolds (2016), or Mills (2018). To do justice to the social justice model of suicidality, some authors seem to perceive suicide as a tragic, avoidable, but “normal” response to social oppression, as Chandler (2020a) does. In a similar way, other critical suicidologists have started theorizing suicide as a choice involving agency: see Marsh (2010b), Fitzpatrick (2020), Jaworski (2020), White and Morris (2019), LeMaster (2022), or Krebs (2022).
27. On HIV/AIDS narratives and memoirs, see the analysis of disability/crip scholar Ally Day (2021).
28. See, for example, Stefan (2016); Radford, Wishart, and Martin (2019); and White and Morris (2019).
29. See, for example, Stefan (2016) or Gandsman (2018).
30. See, for example, Radford, Wishart, and Martin (2019) or Trans Lifeline (2020).
31. See, for example, WHO (2014), Beattie and Devitt (2015), Bering (2018), Rose (2019), and Bryan (2022).
32. See, for example, Szasz (1999); Hewitt (2010, 2013); Webb (2011); Stefan (2016); East, Dorozenko, and Martin (2019); Radford, Wishart, and Martin (2019); White and Morris (2019); and Krebs (2022).
33. See, for example, Werth (1996, 1998), Webb (2011), and Stefan (2016).
34. I discuss the notion of (mental) competence later in this chapter and in Chapters 3 and 4. As rightly pointed out by one of the anonymous reviewers of this book (whom I thank for their comment), it is crucial to question what competence means and on which epistemological perspectives it is based. Indeed, decisions about who is considered mentally competent are fraught with ableist, sanist, and cogniticist discourses. My usage of the word competence, in the spirit of critical disability studies, aims to be inclusive of a wide variety of mental capacities. Authors Michael Bach and Lana Kerzner (2010, 17) state, from a legal standpoint, that in Canada, capacity is “defined to refer to an ability to understand information relevant to making a decision and an ability to appreciate the reasonably foreseeable consequences of a decision or lack of decision. In this sense, ‘capacity’ refers to the cognitive requisites considered necessary for exercising one’s right to legal capacity, and having it respected by others.” These authors, and others, such as myself and colleagues (2020b), show how this legal definition is ableist, sanist, and cogniticist. For readers interested in anti-ableist critiques of the notions of autonomy, competence, and capacity, see Gill (2000, 2004), Burstow (2015), Clifford Simplican (2015), and Mills (2015). On the notion of competence and decision-making capacity, see Gavaghan (2017) and Charland, Lemmens, and Wada (2018).
35. Space limitations prevent me from expanding on Spivak’s (1988) commentary on the practice of sati, a Hindu tradition in which a widow burns herself to death following the death of her husband. While Spivak critiques the colonialism behind Western philosophers’ and feminists’ denunciation of that practice, and while she wants subaltern people to be allowed to speak on their own behalf, she does not escape, in my opinion, the negative conceptualization of suicidality as a “problem.” Indeed, even though she suggests that suicide is one of the most striking examples of a person speaking only through their final actions, she still considers suicide to be a failure.
36. Kouri and White (2014), White (2015b), and Chandler (2020a) critique that positivist trend in suicidology.
37. See, for example, Shneidman (1993); Joiner (2005); Cholbi (2011); Joiner et al. (2016); and Bering (2018).
38. Some chapters in this volume emphasize the importance of listening to the voices of (ex-)suicidal people and involving them in suicide prevention. White herself insists on the importance of listening to suicidal people’s voices (Kouri and White 2014; White and Morris 2019).
39. See, for example, Furqan et al. (2018), Corriveau et al. (2016), and Perreault, Corriveau, and Cauchie (2016).
40. A few authors have started to listen to the narratives of suicidal people, such as East, Dorozenko, and Martin (2019); Radford, Wishart, and Martin (2019); Marsh, Winter, and Marzano (2021); Krebs (2022); or LeMaster (2022).
41. For definitions of Mad studies and its concepts, such as sanism, see the glossary in LeFrançois, Menzies, and Reaume (2013). Readers might also want to consult the scholarship of Mad studies and anti-psychiatry studies: Burstow (1992, 2014, 2015); Price (2011); Mollow (2013); Burstow, LeFrançois, and Diamond (2014); Leblanc and Kinsella (2016); Kilty and Dej (2018); Rose (2019); Thorneycroft (2020); and Beresford and Russo (2022).
42. See, for example, Cholbi (2011) and Bering (2018).
43. See, for example, Szasz (1999); Stefan (2016); Borecky, Thomsen, and Dubov (2019); and Paperny (2019a). On the notion of competence and decision-making capacity, see Gavaghan (2017) and Charland, Lemmens, and Wada (2018).
44. Authors have shown that there are forms of sanism among disability scholars/activists (Ben-Moshe 2020; Burstow, LeFrançois, and Diamond 2014; Clare 2017; LeFrançois, Menzies, and Reaume 2013; Lewis 2010; Nicki 2001). In this context, it is not surprising that suicidality is often perceived through a pathological sanist lens as a “mental illness” to “cure.”
45. Price (2015, 269), who coined the term bodymind, writes, “I started using bodymind freely, mostly because I was tired of saying body-and-mind all the time, and unhappy about the implicit division created by the coordinating conjunction.”
46. See also Kafer (2013, 43) on that question.
47. I started these analyses in my earlier work (Baril 2017, 2018, 2020b). Marsh (2010b, 226) also briefly mentions this injunction to happiness and health.
48. See Burstow (1992, 2015); LeFrançois, Menzies, and Reaume (2013); Liegghio (2013); Burstow, LeFrançois, and Diamond (2014); Ben-Moshe (2020); and Beresford and Russo (2022). See also the work of Wilson (2018), Bernheim (2019), and Krebs (2020) on contentions and involuntary hospitalization.
49. Space limitations prevent me from elaborating on Foucault’s conceptualization of biopower. Interested readers could read Murray (2006), Tierney (2006, 2010), BayatRizi (2008), Marsh (2010b), and Taylor (2014) on the question of Foucault, biopower, and suicide.
50. I invite readers to explore reflections on neoliberalism as related to disability and mental health issues in the work of Fritsch (2016), Kolářová (2015), Mitchell and Snyder (2015), McRuer (2018), and Rose (2019), as well as those related to suicide in the work of Fullagar (2003) and Puar (2013).
51. This interview, titled “Un système fini face à une demande infinie,” is text number 325 in Dits et Écrits II 1976–1988 (Foucault 2001, 1186–1201). The other piece, titled “Un plaisir si simple,” appears in the same book as text number 264 (777–779).
52. I also discuss other alternative conceptualizations of suicidality in Chapter 4, but in relation to assisted suicide.
53. Burstow (1992), a leader of the anti-psychiatry movement and scholarship, shares many of Szasz’s arguments about suicide.
54. Other philosophers, such as Ogien (2009), have defended a similar position. On the distinction between negative and positive rights, see also Campbell (2017).
55. For a few examples, see pp. 7, 9, 51, 57, 81–82, 88–89, 122–23, 246, and 269 in Stefan (2006).
56. Her book conveys this continuous tension between an individualistic, libertarian perspective and a more structural approach to suicidality.
57. See also Tack (2019) and Krebs (2022) about critical perspectives on prevention, as well as Horncastle (2018), Froese and Greensmith (2019), and LeMaster (2022) for queer, anti-ableist, and anti-sanist perspectives on suicidality that call for destigmatization and for better listening to suicidal people’s needs.
58. See, for example, Spivak (1988), Mills (1997, 2007), Hill Collins (2000), Sullivan and Tuana (2007), Medina (2012), and Hall (2017b).
59. Jaworski and Marsh (2020) allude briefly to epistemic injustice in their text. White (2020b) also mobilizes this notion briefly. It is also worth noting that in an earlier piece, Fitzpatrick (2016) demonstrates how some discourses and stories on suicide are given more credibility and legitimacy than others.
60. See, for example, Wedlake (2020); Benkhelifa et al. (2021); Camier-Lemoine and Leaune (2021); Corriveau et al. (2021); Fitzpatrick et al. (2021); Marsh, Winter, and Marzano (2021); Fitzpatrick (2022); Krebs (2022); and LeMaster (2022).
61. While Fricker (2007) coined the expression epistemic injustice, that form of injustice had been theorized by racialized activists/scholars before Fricker, including Spivak (1988) or Hill Collins (2000). It is important to recognize the contributions of these racialized scholars, which are often erased.
62. This discussion of the notion of social death is inspired by some passages in a paper titled “Voluntary HIV Acquisition as Social ‘Death Sentence’” co-presented with Victoria Pitts-Taylor at the National Women’s Studies Association International Conference in 2014. I thank William Hébert for the references on social death and Victoria Pitts-Taylor for her crucial reflections and contributions on that topic that are reflected in this paragraph.
CHAPTER 2
1. While I prefer to use the expressions queer and trans communities, in this chapter, I sometimes use the abbreviation LGBTQ to reflect the language the authors use in their texts to refer to those communities.
2. See, for example, Dyck (2015) and Adams and Vincent (2019).
3. See, for example, Cover (2012), Jaworski (2014), McDermott and Roen (2016), and Radford, Wishart, and Martin (2019).
4. In a similar way, Yue (2021, 71) argues that death records in the U.K. do not identify ethnicity and migration status due to a “colonial amnesia and its fictitious universal white citizenship” that is reflected in discourses on suicide (see also Adams and Vincent 2019). Similarly, Froese and Greensmith (2019) contend that suicide prevention is biased across sexist, heterosexist, and racist dimensions. I believe that the absence of information about gender identity and sexual orientation in death records also reveals heteronormative and cisnormative biases in our study of deaths and suicides.
5. While the subfields of queer and trans health studies discuss suicide, queer and trans studies generally do not theorize suicidality itself. Key edited volumes in these fields barely address the topic (e.g., Edelman 2004; Halberstam 2011; Raj and Irving 2014; Stryker 2017; Stryker and Azura 2013; Stryker and Whittle 2006).
6. On the notion of queering, see Halperin (2003), Sandahl (2003), McRuer (2006, 2018), Halberstam (2008, 2011), and Kafer (2013). On the notion of transing, see Sullivan (2009) and DiPietro (2016).
7. See also Tack (2019) and Brian (2016) on how some institutions, such as asylums, aim to preserve life.
8. Paradoxically, LGBQ movements have been quite supportive of assisted suicide for disabled/sick/ill/old people, particularly for people living with HIV/AIDS. When surveyed, most LGBQ communities support the legalization of assisted suicide (Batavia 1997; Magnusson 2004). That being said, a surprising silence about assisted suicide and a scarcity of literature on the topic exist in queer circles. Additionally, a dearth of studies on trans people’s perceptions of assisted suicide exists. Gerontologist Tarynn M. Witten (2014) is one of the rare authors who briefly refers to suicide and assisted suicide, based on comments from participants in her studies who fear discrimination due to aging and see death as an escape from violence. A search of dozens of U.S. trans organizations’ websites (e.g., National Resource Center on LGBT Aging; Trans Lifeline; TransOhio; PFLAG; FORGE; Gender Justice League Washington), including in states where assisted suicide is legalized, led me to identify a lack of information on transness and assisted suicide.
9. See the following authors, who are critical of these discourses on risk: Cover (2012, 2016a, 2016b), Jaworski (2014), Bryan and Mayock (2017), and Roen (2019).
10. When referring to multi-pronoun users, such as Kate Bornstein, who uses she and they pronouns, I first include the multiple pronouns in parentheses following the name of the person and then alternate between pronouns.
11. For a history and analysis of the campaign It Gets Better, see Halberstam (2010), Puar (2007, 2013), and Froese and Greensmith (2019). This campaign has been critiqued for individualizing structural issues and placing the burden on LGBTQ youth to wait for a better future as well as promising a better life only to those who can be assimilated into White, ableist, capitalist, and hetero- and homonormative frameworks.
12. See, for example, McRuer (2006, 2018), McRuer and Mollow (2012), and Piepzna-Samarasinha (2018).
13. See, for example, Clare (2009, 2017); Baril (2015); Baril, Pullen Sansfaçon, and Gelly (2020); Baril et al. (2020); and Obourn (2020).
14. This is the case for LeMaster (2022, 2) (she/they), who also identifies as trans and suicidal and also calls for “communicating suicidality free of stigma, shame, and oppression” while embracing my anti-suicidist framework. S. Corr, a nonbinary suicidal person I quote in the Introduction, also adheres to the framework I propose, as do several other trans and nonbinary suicidal people who have contacted me throughout the years.
15. On peer-support groups, see also Lundström (2018) and Marsh, Winter, and Marzano (2021).
16. The Trans Lifeline website also features ten principles, including harm reduction, informed consent, autonomy, and self-determination. My queercrip approach to suicide presented in Chapter 5 includes some of these principles. See also Martin (2011) about the importance of trust in suicide interventions.
17. See, for example, James et al. (2016) and Trans pulse Canada Team (2020).
18. Ahmed (2010), who questions the injunction to happiness, does not question the injunction to live either.
19. On the notion of “cruel optimism,” sexist and heterosexist violence, and suicide, see the excellent article by Greensmith and Froese (2021).
CHAPTER 3
1. See, for example, LeFrançois, Menzies, and Reaume (2013) and Kilty and Dej (2018). While two chapters in Daley, Costa, and Beresford’s book (2019) engage with stories of people who died by suicide, the topic of suicide is not discussed in detail. One exception is Burstow (1992).
2. The last two sentences first appeared in Baril, “Theorizing the Intersections of Ableism, Sanism, Ageism and Suicidism in Suicide and Physician-Assisted Death Debates,” in The Disability Bioethics Reader, edited by J. M. Reynolds and C. Wieseler (New York: Routledge, 2022), 221–231. Reproduced with permission of the Licensor through PLSclear.
3. See, for example, Ackerman (1998), Gill (1999, 2000, 2004), Longmore (2003), Amundson and Taira (2005), Coleman (2010, 2018, 2020), Kolářová (2015), Frazee (2016, 2020), and Ben-Moshe (2020).
4. See, for example, Batavia (1997), Hwang (1999), Shakespeare (2006), Shildrick (2008), and Davis (2013b).
5. See, for example, Ouellette (2011) and Braswell (2018).
6. For explanations about the usage of crip as a verb, see McRuer (2006, 2018), McRuer and Johnson (2014), Fritsch (2016), Hall (2017a), and Thorneycroft (2020). McRuer (2018, 23–24) mentions that “cripping always attends to how spaces, issues or discussions get ‘straightened.’ The critical act of cripping, I argue, resists ‘straightening’ in a rather more expansive sense that we might think of straightening at the moment, in queer studies, activism, or art” (emphasis in the original).
7. On cripistemology, see McRuer and Johnson (2014), Patsavas (2014), Johnson (2015), and Hall (2017a, 2017b).
8. Some sentences in Section 3.1.1 first appeared in Baril, “Theorizing the Intersections of Ableism, Sanism, Ageism and Suicidism in Suicide and Physician-Assisted Death Debates,” in The Disability Bioethics Reader, edited by J. M. Reynolds and C. Wieseler (New York: Routledge, 2022), 221–231. Reproduced with permission of the Licensor through PLSclear.
9. See, for example, Gill (1992, 1999, 2000, 2004), Ackerman (1998), Longmore (2003), Amundson and Taira (2005), Coleman (2010, 2018, 2020), Kolářová (2015), and Ben-Moshe (2020).
10. See, for example, Gill (1992, 1999, 2000, 2004), Ackerman (1998), Longmore (2003), Amundson and Taira (2005), Coleman (2010, 2018, 2020), Wardlaw (2010), and Kolářová (2015).
11. I thank disabled activist Elizabeth Hopkins, who shared with me her reflections in favor of assisted suicide for disabled people as well as resources on the topic.
12. For a different position on assisted suicide, see also Shildrick (2008) and Wicks (2016).
13. For authors that review both sides of the debate, see also Ho (2014) and Ouellette (2011).
14. See, for example, Lewis (2013); Burstow, LeFrançois, and Diamond (2014); Burstow (2015); Kilty and Dej (2018); Daley, Costa, and Beresford (2019); Thorneycroft (2020); and Beresford and Russo (2022).
15. See, for example, Liegghio (2013), Leblanc and Kinsella (2016), and Wieseler (2020).
16. Some sentences in this paragraph first appeared in Baril, “Theorizing the Intersections of Ableism, Sanism, Ageism and Suicidism in Suicide and Physician-Assisted Death Debates,” in The Disability Bioethics Reader, edited by J. M. Reynolds and C. Wieseler (New York: Routledge, 2022), 221–231. Reproduced with permission of the Licensor through PLSclear.
17. Without focusing on disability per se, Froese and Greensmith (2019) brilliantly mobilize Mad studies as a guiding framework in their cultural analysis of sexist and racist violence in TV series that deal with suicidality.
18. See also her article that analyzes “the psychopolitics of austerity” (Mills 2018). Mills (2015, 2017, 2020) puts forth an intersectional agenda and a disability justice perspective that critique some aspects of disability studies, in particular its racist and colonialist biases. See also Yue (2021) on suicidality and immigration.
19. On those forms of sanism, see, for example, Nicki (2001); Lewis (2013); LeFrançois, Menzies, and Reaume (2013); and Burstow, LeFrançois, and Diamond (2014).
20. See, for example, Gill (1999), Longmore (2003), Coleman (2010), and Frazee (2016, 2020).
21. Some sentences in this paragraph first appeared in Baril, “Theorizing the Intersections of Ableism, Sanism, Ageism and Suicidism in Suicide and Physician-Assisted Death Debates,” in The Disability Bioethics Reader, edited by J. M. Reynolds and C. Wieseler (New York: Routledge, 2022), 221–231. Reproduced with permission of the Licensor through PLSclear.
22. On those traumas, see Paperny (2019a).
23. See the last chapter of Burstow’s 1992 book, Radical Feminist Therapy: Working in the Context of Violence. While opposing coercive interventions for suicidal people, Burstow did not go so far as to promote a positive right to suicide. From a Mad perspective, Froese and Greensmith (2019) also put forth interesting analyses of suicidality that go beyond the preventionist script.
24. The summary of these models is inspired by the one proposed in Baril (2015, 64–66).
25. On these flaws, see Nicki (2001), Wendell (2001), Mollow (2006), Siebers (2008), Shakespeare (2010), Kafer (2013), Baril (2015), and Hall (2017a).
26. Patsavas (2014, 205) proposes a “cripistemology of pain.” Patsavas is one of the few disability scholars to discuss suicide, but I have chosen to exclude Patsavas’s text since it focuses more on pain than on suicide.
CHAPTER 4
1. See, for example, McInerney (2000), BayatRizi (2008), McCormick (2011), Stefan (2016), Campbell (2017), Gandsman (2018a, 2018b), and Dumsday (2021).
2. I will not discuss arguments opposing the right to die. For those interested in critiques of right-to-die discourses, see Smith (2000), Gorsuch (2006), Campbell (2017), and Dumsday (2021), as well as all the activists/scholars discussed in Chapter 3 who oppose assisted suicide.
3. Some sentences in Section 4.1 first appeared in Baril, “Theorizing the Intersections of Ableism, Sanism, Ageism and Suicidism in Suicide and Physician-Assisted Death Debates,” in The Disability Bioethics Reader, edited by J. M. Reynolds and C. Wieseler (New York: Routledge, 2022), 221–231. Reproduced with permission of the Licensor through PLSclear.
4. See, for example, Werth (1996, 1998, 1999), Hewitt (2010), Sumner (2011), and Kious and Battin (2019).
5. On that point, see Cholbi (2011), Sumner (2011), Stefan (2016), and Friesen (2020).
6. For a typology of assisted suicide practices, see Chao et al. (2016). For useful definitions of these practices, see Downie (2004), Sumner (2011), and Quill and Sussman (2020).
7. See, for example, Cohen-Almagor (2016), Quill and Sussman (2020), and Young (2020).
8. Downie (2004) adopts a similar position and argues for a permissive legal system in which age, terminal illness, and other similar factors would not determine support for assisted suicide. However, her argument is about individual autonomy, particularly in the context of disability/sickness/illness (regardless of terminality), and not about promoting structural changes for suicidal people, as mine is.
9. In Canada, the expression medical assistance in dying (MAID) includes voluntary euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide. For a history of MAID, see Downie (2004, 2020); Gandsman, Herington, and Przybylak-Brouillard (2016); Charland, Lemmens, and Wada (2018); and Dumsday (2021).
10. The 2021 revised law makes it clear that requests based solely on mental illness will not be eligible until March 2023, to allow the government additional time to study this question. At the time of revising the copyedited version of this book in December 2022, the Canadian government announced that it is seeking additional delays in expanding MAID for those with mental illness only; no new deadlines have been announced.
11. See, for example, Dworkin et al. (1998), Downie (2004), Battin (2005), Ogien (2009), McCormick (2011), Braswell (2018), Gandsman (2018b), and Quill and Sussman (2020).
12. See, for example, McCormick (2011), Gandsman (2018), Coleman (2020), and Engelhart (2021).
13. See also Westwood (2021) about the inclusion of older adults in assisted suicide laws.
14. Engelhart (2021) provides information about how Exit has changed its criteria through the years.
15. See also Kim, De Vries, and Peteet (2016).
16. See, for example, Thienpont et al. (2015); Kim, De Vries, and Peteet (2016); and Pridmore et al. (2021). Depression and despair are interestingly also key reasons given by those who request access to assisted suicide based on physical disability/sickness/illness (Cohen-Almagor 2016; Friesen 2020; Stefan 2016).
17. On the barriers that could prevent some people from accessing assisted suicide, see Downie (2020) and Engelhart (2021).
18. See, for example, Paperny (2019a), Chih et al. (2020), Trans pulse Canada Team (2020), and Engelhart (2021).
19. On disbelief, see Nicki (2001), Mollow (2006), and Hewitt (2010, 2013).
20. For arguments against the extension of assisted suicide to mentally ill people, see Cholbi (2011); Cohen-Almagor (2016); Boer (2017); CAMH (2017); Charland, Lemmens, and Wada (2018); and Ho and Norman (2019).
21. See, for example, Hewitt (2010, 2013), Bayliss (2016), and Scully (2020).
22. In some countries (e.g., the Netherlands), formal diagnosis is not mandatory for accessing assisted suicide. Whereas the diagnosis is not officially required, the criteria, founded on unbearable suffering and the lack of improvement, as well as the application process for assisted suicide itself, make access difficult for people without support from professionals in obtaining assisted suicide.
23. On mental competence and law, see Gavaghan (2017), Wilson (2018), Bernheim (2019), and Del Villar, Willmott, and White (2020).
24. On that point, see also Hewitt (2010).
25. See, for example, Werth (1996, 1998, 1999); Szasz (1999, 2008); Appel (2007); Stefan (2016); Borecky, Thomsen, and Dubov (2019); Kious and Battin (2019); and Pridmore et al. (2021).
26. See, for example, Cholbi (2011); Sumner (2011); Creighton, Cerel, and Battin (2017); and Giwa (2019).
27. See, for example, Appel (2007) and Kious and Battin (2019).
28. For example, encyclopedia entries on assisted suicide and voluntary euthanasia that list criteria usually accepted to allow those practices are all related to disability/sickness/illness/end of life (Young 2014).
29. Authors such as Jukka Varelius (2015, 2016) evoke the possibility of going beyond this ontology of assisted suicide, but from an extremely problematic position, such as proposing to allow involuntary euthanasia for nonautonomous subjects, supposedly for society’s and the family’s best interests.
30. See Lund et al. (2016).
31. See, for example, Werth (1996, 1998, 1999), Young (2020), and Pridmore et al. (2021).
32. Some sentences in this paragraph first appeared in Baril, “Theorizing the Intersections of Ableism, Sanism, Ageism and Suicidism in Suicide and Physician-Assisted Death Debates,” in The Disability Bioethics Reader, edited by J. M. Reynolds and C. Wieseler (New York: Routledge, 2022), 221–231. Reproduced with permission of the Licensor through PLSclear.
33. See, for example, Battin (2005), Cholbi (2011, 2017), and Cholbi and Varelius (2015).
34. On that narrative, see Bettcher (2014).
35. BayatRizi (2008), Stefan (2016), and Engelhart (2021) discuss instances where suicidal people changed their discourses to fit the criteria to qualify for assistance with dying.
36. Some radical right-to-die activists propose eradicating criteria for justifying assisted suicide and refuse to establish good or bad reasons for dying, but they do not propose legalizing a right to die for all individuals (Engelhart 2021).
37. Some sentences in Section 4.2 first appeared in Baril, “Theorizing the Intersections of Ableism, Sanism, Ageism and Suicidism in Suicide and Physician-Assisted Death Debates,” in The Disability Bioethics Reader, edited by J. M. Reynolds and C. Wieseler (New York: Routledge, 2022), 221–231. Reproduced with permission of the Licensor through PLSclear.
38. See, for example, Ogden (2001); Gandsman, Herington, and Przybylak-Brouillard (2016); Gandsman (2018b); and Engelhart (2021).
39. See the critiques made by Baril and Silverman (2019), Gallop (2019), and McGuire (2020). On the nexus on ageism and ableism, see Aubrecht, Kelly, and Rice (2020) and Baril et al. (2020).
40. See, for example, Cholbi (2017) and Creighton, Cerel, and Battin (2017).
41. See, for example, Appel (2007); Stefan (2016); Hewitt (2010); Burstow, LeFrançois, and Diamond (2014); and Borecky, Thomsen, and Dubov (2019).
42. See, for example, Werth (1996, 1998, 1999), Battin (2005), Sumner (2011), Kious and Battin (2019), and Giwa (2019).
43. See also Dolmage (2017, 119) on “transformative access.”
44. The term thanatopolitics was coined by Giorgio Agamben (1998). It is composed of the prefix thanato-, referring to Thanatos, the Greek god of death, and politics; the term refers to “the politics of death” (Murray, 2006, 195).
CHAPTER 5
1. On that point, see Magnusson (2004), Stefan (2016), Quill and Sussman (2020), and Engelhart (2021).
2. On that point, see Ogden (2001), Magnusson (2004), Engelhart (2021), and Exit International (2021).
3. See, for example, Benkhelifa et al. (2021); Wedlake (2020); Camier-Lemoine and Leaune (2021); Fitzpatrick et al. (2021); Marsh, Winter, and Marzano (2021); Fitzpatrick (2022); Krebs (2022); and LeMaster (2022).
4. Fullagar (2003) refers to an “ethics of listening” to suicidal people that shares similarities with the “ethics of wonder and generosity” developed by Jaworski.
5. About suicide “contagion,” see Wray, Colen, and Pescosolido (2011) and Kral (2019). However, the idea of contagion among peers is contested. On that topic, see Lundström (2018); Radford, Wishart, and Martin (2019); and Marsh, Winter, and Marzano (2021).
6. See, for example, Burstow (1992); Radford, Wishart, and Martin (2019); Fitzpatrick (2020); Jaworski (2020); Jaworski and Marsh (2020); Trans Lifeline (2020); White (2020a, 2020b); and Fitzpatrick et al. (2021).
7. On the harm-reduction approach, see Marlatt, Larimer, and Witkiewitz (2012) and Collins et al. (2012).
8. Shakespeare (2006, 41) endorses a harm-reduction approach to assisted suicide for sick/ill people at the end of life but does not extend the approach to suicidal people.
9. On the difficulty of causing death, see Paperny (2019a) and Engelhart (2021).
10. Without endorsing a position like mine, some authors have started to develop approaches that offer counternarratives to the dominant pathologization of suicide (e.g., Chandler 2020a, 2020b; Fitzpatrick 2020, 2022; Fitzpatrick et al. 2021; Jaworski 2020; Jaworski and Marsh 2020; Marsh et al. 2021; Radford, Wishart, and Martin 2019; White 2020a, 2020b).
11. I would like to thank Ozzie Silverman for pointing out the potential role of familial pressures in the decision to die.
12. See, for example, Ouellette (2011), Ho (2014), and Ho and Norman (2019).
13. See, for example Battin (2005) and Davis (2013b).
14. On disabled/crip futurity, see also Obourn (2020).
CONCLUSION
1. The names in this true story have been changed to protect the anonymity of the people involved.
2. LeMaster (2022, 4), who has lost many loved ones through suicide, expresses similar thoughts: “I am not sad that you died by suicide; I’m sad that you died alone.”