Physician assisted suicide, voluntary euthanasia, call it what you will. Why is it that even doctors in favour of euthanasia believe that it should be an option only to those with a physical terminal illness? Cannot depression in some circumstances also be considered a terminal illness? For me (and I'm sure I'm not alone) my quality of life is severely restricted by my psychiatric illness. One by one the layers of dignity are coming off. I find it hard to see how I can ever progress, I'm too old to start over. Before I lost the plot in 2006 I had a challenging professional job. Given the crisis caused by bankers in the global economy there is an increasing shortage of jobs. The only type of work that anyone would consider is low paid menial drudgery which would drive me insane. In Roman times, suicide was morally acceptable. When the empire crubled, Europe became feudal. The Church was not only a spiritual entity but had politicsand economics as its driving force. If feudal serfs had not been convinced into thinking that they would burn in Hell if they took their own lives I believe that many of them would have done so, something that wouldn't have gone down well with the elite. To function an exploitative economic system relies on a functional underclass, those that barely manage to scrape by. Whilst the dynamics of exploitation have changed since feudal times the principle remains the same. 95% of the wealth in this country is owned by between 2%and 5% of the population and they don't want to give any of it away. They don't give a f*ck about the suffering of those trapped in demeaning subsistence level employment as long as they continue to make them rich. I'm sorry that this has been a bit of a rant, I just needed to get it off my chest. I know that the arguments above are disorganized and I know I could put all of this better another time, when I've had more than 4 hours sleep in a 72 hour stretch so please forgive me.