Your questions seemed rather rhetorical to me. As long as you act on the premise that there’s no solution, any conversation about the topic - including this one - is a monumental waste of time. So let’s just leave it at that.

Ah, a doomer. So let me guess, there’s nothing we can do and every form of activism is useless?

Just go on with your day then. This protest certainly isn’t about you. They didn’t hurt you personally, so why not just let them do their thing. The people who believe solutions exist can continue to search for them and you don’t have to bother.

Or do you actually have something helpful in mind?

How do we stop evil corporations? With political action. How do we get political action? Either by voting or collective activism.

There’s no solution that doesn’t require ourselves to spring into action, even if it’s “mostly the fault of a few corporations and their executives”.

That sounds really good. Glad to hear it.

Ah okay. So deinstitutionalization in that context was meant to include psychiatric institutions into general hospitals? Because that I can totally get behind.

Based on the other comments I got the impression that there simply is no inpatient treatment plan for mental health in the US.

My experience does not come from movies. I am an outpatient psychotherapist (in a country with a reasonably functioning psychiatric system). I have repeatedly seen patients slip into psychomental crises where outpatient care is no longer sufficient. The local psychiatric clinics were sometimes real lifesavers. That’s why I find the idea of healthcare without emergency institutions confusing. I would find it terrible not to be able to offer my patients anything in such emergencies.

Bleak.

I don’t quite understand how deinstitutionalizing was supposed to work here. That’s like dissolving the fire department because we want to avoid cars. Was there no way to reform or replace the institutions? Just getting rid of an emergency service seems kinda like the situation you’re describing was part of the plan.

If you live in the US and experience a psychotic episode, a suicidal crisis, or another mental health emergency - where do you go?

And to think I bought a Japanese car specifically because of Dieselgate… well.

They’re all corrupt, aren’t they?

Aktuell wird doch ne Stromtrasse durch BW gebaut. Diese lächerliche Nummer von wegen, wir hätten gerne Strom, aber keine Trasse, war eine astreine CSU Nummer.

This idea of “actually, all Germans secretly think this way” is a common excuse of modern day Nazis to justify their increasingly brazen behaviour in public. Just so you know whose talking points you’re reproducing here.

Insane. Thanks for sharing.

I am a psychotherapist. Mental disorders are often curable. Our mind, our psyche, our brain develop and change in every waking moment, one small increment at a a time. A good indication for this are mental disorders themselves. Their emergence is proof of our mind’s capability to change - for the worse, in this case, but change nonetheless.

So in theory it should always be possible to change the other way around, to get significantly better to the point where the disorder is no longer present. (If you define a episode of mental health and wellbeing after a depressive episode as “managing” a still present disorder, then sure, they are incurable, but that’s because that’s part of your definition to begin with. The symptoms of a mental disorder can definitely disappear.) A more difficult question would be if our surroundings and social realities allow for so much change to take place. And sometimes, unfortunately, this isn’t possible, since our society can be a fucked up place and economic constrains have an unavoidable influence on our capability to shape our own path.

Still, in my personal experience working with hundreds of patiens in different therapeutic setting, most people can (and do) reclaim their mental health, given supportive surroundings and adequate treatment. From your pessimistic outlook at mental health I will cautiously assume that you don’t have those widely available to you. In this case you’d be somewhat right: Under such circumstances the possibilities to cure mental disorders are limited. Another complicating factor might be mental disorders themselves though. The feeling of “this is never going to get better, I’ll never be happy again” is one most people with depressive disorders know all to well. So if we ask the affected people directly we will often arrive at the conclusion that the disorders are in fact incurable. And that’s a horrible feeling for sure. I find it important to remember though that what our thoughts tell us in those dark episodes isn’t necessarily the truth. In this case I’d argue it isn’t. I’ve seen too many examples of the opposite, luckily.

It’s going to be hard for her partner, friends, and family, but it would be so much worse and so traumatic if she didn’t have help or had to hide the desires until she took her own life regardless of the laws.

I’m not sure that’s true. Losing someone to suicide is in itself quite traumatic. One relief many people have is when they wrap their head around how a self destructive impulse in the heat of an especially devastating moment could have led to it. But living with the fact that your daughter/wife/sister/friend very consciously decided she would rather be dead than to share in this life with you - that’s tough. It’s not unusual with relatives of suicide victims to struggle with feelings of intense anger towards the person they lost, which in turn can lead to feelings of guilt and shame. It’s hard to work through something like that. And I don’t think it gets any easier if the circumstances are as emphasised as in this case.

I think there are very valid use cases for assisted suicide. Personally I doubt that depression is one of them, because suicidality is such an inextricable part of the disorder itself. At the end of the day this is a suicide, just with extra steps and a stamp of approval by a national agency. The people surviving her will not only have to work through the fact of her suicide but process the official approval as well.

The only advantage to a “regular” suicide I can think of is avoiding the trauma of the person finding you. (Although there are probably ways around that anyway.) But I guess she has her reasons to have chosen this specific method and setting.

I understand the frustration about the injustice behind it, but it’s missing the point. Justice should never be the reason to support something thats so harmful to our environment. Imagine giving a private jet to every economically disadvantaged person in the name of equality - we’d be fucking ourselves over big time. Meat is actually a luxury product that’s only kept affordable based on some of the most environmentally destructive tools of capitalism.

It sucks that luxury products exist. It sucks that ultra rich people exist, but it’s the unfortunate fact of our times. Overturning this system is a seperate fight. And eating red meat won’t win it.

But that’s not how it was framed at the courts at all, proven by the fact that all the other product names containing “milk” were considered okay. It was specifically argued that customers could be confused to accidentally buy the vegan variant. Based on your arguments “coconut milk” should be problematic, but it isn’t. Soy milk and almond milk could have been grandfathered in, but they weren’t, and the reason very specifically was pressure from the dairy industry targeting their competition.

BS headline. Side effects are not the reason it’s withdrawn.

Guess you’re right. But except for this scenario where your religion tells you it’s better to kill an animal than not to kill an animal, I would still expect most if not all ethical considerations to eventually conclude that not killing something is preferable. Otherwise I fail to see how someone could not agree with this as lowest common denominator.

I find that hard to believe tbh. Maybe if someone doesn’t think about it at all. But the second you do it should be pretty obvious that killing an animal and not killing an animal are different scenarios, and very generally speaking one of those is better than the other.

The only alternative I could think of would have to be based on the assumption that an animal’s life absolutely doesn’t matter at all, and I never did (nor would want to) meet anyone who honestly believed that.

Yeah I figured it’s not really an option in the US. Here it doesn’t cost anything.