Below are the citation and extracts of the lead editorial in this week's Lancet.
In 'more than 20 countries, suicide and attempted suicide remain an offence punishable by imprisonment and fines for those who survive'.
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CITATION: Punishing the tortured: criminalisation of suicide
The Lancet, Editorial| volume 401, issue 10384, p1241, april 15, 2023
Published: April 15, 2023DOI:https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(23)00764-X
EXTRACTS
Providing care and treatment for people with suicidal ideas, rather than subjecting them to a criminal process, seems intuitively humane and appropriate. And yet, in more than 20 countries, suicide and attempted suicide remain an offence punishable by imprisonment and fines for those who survive, and financial penalties for the families of those who do not. The continuation of laws against suicide and attempted suicide is partly based on two contentious beliefs that need to be interrogated.
The first is that legislation acts as a deterrent. But it is hard to imagine that an individual in a state of mental distress is considering the finer points of the law...
The second misconception is that by decriminalising suicide and attempted suicide, suicide is being condoned... Decriminalisation represents not an endorsement, but rather a transition: away from suicide being considered a matter for the criminal justice system, and towards it being an issue that requires a response from other parts of society, not least the health community...
What is clear, however, is that criminalisation drives people away from seeking help and treatment, precisely when it is needed most. Punitive laws could result in the distressing situation whereby patients, recovering in hospital after a suicide attempt, face prosecution once they leave medical care: in effect, they will be punished for not killing themselves. Such laws propagate and perpetuate stigmatising attitudes towards mental health and mental illness both in individuals and broader society...
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COMMENT (NPW): The policymakers in these 20 countries are ill-informed. If they were to follow evidence-informed policy, suicide would rightly be decriminalised and needless suffering avoided.
HIFA profile: Neil Pakenham-Walsh is coordinator of HIFA (Healthcare Information For All), a global health community that brings all stakeholders together around the shared goal of universal access to reliable healthcare information. HIFA has 20,000 members in 180 countries, interacting in four languages and representing all parts of the global evidence ecosystem. HIFA is administered by Global Healthcare Information Network, a UK-based nonprofit in official relations with the World Health Organization. Email: neil@hifa.org
