Introduction:
The number of people who take their
own lives has been gradually climbing over the past several years.
Additionally, the number of people who die by suicide each year is 25 times
larger than those who die by suicide attempts each year. The Mental Healthcare
Act (MHCA), 2017, was passed into law by the Indian government around the end
of the year 2018, possibly as an attempt to help the situation surrounding
mental health. The Act, notablySection 115 of the act, removed the stigma
associated with suicidal ideation and attempts, which reduced the stigma and
the extended mental anguish experienced by a patient who survives a suicide attempt.
There were potential legal
repercussions due to this Act given that it contradicts Sections 109, 116, 306, and 309 of the Indian Penal Code. Those individuals who have
attempted suicide would have become eligible to receive free mental healthcare,
treatment, and rehabilitation due to this piece of legislation.
Therefore, the end outcome places a
significant financial strain on the
government. Refreshing one's knowledge of mental illness and related skills is
required for medical professionals, mental health professionals, and general
and mental health institutions engaged in the treatment of persons who have attempted
suicide to comply with the conditions of the act. In compliance with the
criteria of the Mental Health Care Act of 2017, massive public education
campaigns were also required to make treatment for mental health issues
available to persons who have attempted suicide.
The structure of this study includes
an analysis, from a comparative point of view, of the legal frameworks that
exist in various countries on the right to commit suicide. After reviewing the
available evidence, the author of this paper reviews the domestic state of
affairs taking into account that the right to life includes the right to a good
death. The final part of the paper includes a discussion of many different
recommendations for future policy.
Indian Scenario:
The Indian legislature has enacted a
significant number of legislations over the years. As a consequence of this, it
should not come as a surprise that different regulations addressing the same
subject may have contradictory interpretations. Resultantly, the Court is usually
considered responsible for reviewing existing laws and providing a clear
interpretation of them where there is ambiguity. This is done so that the
Parliament may later settle any conflicts that exist between different pieces
of legislation by setting it into law.
It seems like that is what happened
when the Supreme Court raised attention to one of these irregularities,
which is an issue that has not had a visible conciliation. By reading down Section 309 of the Indian Penal Code, the Mental
Healthcare Act of 2017 effectively decriminalized suicide. As a result, the
Supreme Court ordered an explanation from the Union government about this
apparent contradiction in the law, and required the then Attorney General, KK
Venugopal to oversee this inquiry.
There are a few facets to this
comment that demand special study, not the least of which is the urgent need to
weed out policies that are no longer relevant in today's world. IPC Section 309 is a provision that
dates back to the colonial era, and it goes against the growing understanding
that mental illness is a problem that has to be treated rather than discriminated against. For instance, mental illness
frequently results in suicide, which is often considered a choice rather than a
result of a health condition. On the other hand, the Mental Healthcare Act is a
forward-thinking piece of legislation that promotes an ideation of suicide that
is in keeping with the most recent scientific findings.
For example, Section 115 of the Act acknowledges the significant role that
mental illness plays in people's decisions to end their lives by putting an end
to their own life. This argument is of crucial value to the families of those
who have committed suicide because of the stigma that is connected to mental
illness.
People who are in need of treatment
must have access to medical facilities, but it is also vitally necessary to
challenge the deeply ingrained biases that taint public discourse on suicide
and contribute to the taboo around suicide as well as the silence surrounding
it. There is opportunity for legal change considering the direction that
international law is moving in this day and age. Both Canada and Ireland removed the criminal
penalties
for suicide in 1972. The legal and public debate must take into account the
fact that decriminalizing suicide might be an important first step in order to
start a meaningful dialogue about preventing suicide. This is necessary in
order to get the conversation started.
Study on Criminalization:
The International Suicide
Prevention Association (IASP) policy released in May 2020 recommended that suicide
attempts be decriminalized. Reducing societal stigma, increasing access to
mental health treatment, and fostering suicide prevention activities can all be
achieved by decriminalizing attempted suicide. Anti-suicide laws have
subsequently eroded, especially in more secular regions of the world that allow
for a wide range of non-religious and moral interpretations of suicide. In
spite of numerous requests for the decriminalization of suicide, no
comprehensive study or empirical evaluations have been conducted on the
deterrent effect of anti-suicide legislation worldwide.
If the act of taking one's own life
is legally stigmatized, those who have attempted suicide and those who have
survived a suicide attempt may feel humiliated and enraged. It logically
follows that repealing any such legislation will have good long-term effects,
including lowering the social stigma associated with suicide, increasing the
number of individuals who seek professional care, and removing the burden of
potential criminal prosecution from those who attempt suicide.
Global Review:
There are a number of countries in Africa that have legalized the
act of suicide, while the vast majority of Asian nations, with a few notable
exceptions like India, have decriminalized the act of attempting suicide. Even
in the United States of America and the United Kingdom, scenarios are shifting
lately.
USA:
In almost every state in the United
States, both committing suicide and attempting suicide is allowed. Each year, there are over 40,000 people who
take their own lives in the United States, which places suicide as the tenth
leading cause of death in the country regardless of the method of death. On the
other hand, the attempt to commit suicide was previously considered a criminal
offence in several countries.
Today, it is quite unusual for
charges to be brought against a criminal who is in the process of dying. In the
case of Wackwitz v. Roy (1992), in which the question of
whether or not suicide is legal, the Supreme Court of Virginia stated that it
is conscious that it is legislative sanctioning that treats suicide as a crime.
This statement was made during the course of the discussion regarding the
legality of suicide. "No suicide should work a debasement of blood or
forfeiture of an inheritance," as the law states in Section 55–4 of the US
Civil Code. Yet, this does not mean that the crime itself has been eliminated.
This is due to the fact that committing suicide is considered a crime in a
number of common-law jurisdictions, including Virginia.
Policy Design:
The right to one's own
life
is one of the most fundamental rights, since it ensures that everyone may lead
a respectable life. This right is more than just a requirement for the state
not to interfere with the life or body components of an individual; rather, it
is a fundamental right. The State was also given the
responsibility of upholding the sanctity and dignity of human life, which
constituted a positive obligation. As civilized jurisprudence changes
its focus to the potential of State legislators decriminalizing suicide or
attempts at suicide, the time has come to develop unambiguous legal norms on
both the national and international levels. Regulation of physician-assisted euthanasia is necessary, at the very least in
the United States, and the establishment of similar laws in other countries is
just a matter of time. In the process of formulating policy, defining crucial
terms related to mental illness and giving them an unmistakable meaning devoid
of any room for interpretation ought to be given the highest priority.
Repercussions in India:
Under the Indian Penal Code, 1860, Section 309 makes it clear that attempted
suicide is still considered a criminal act. Those who are accused of the
alleged offense have the choice between being released on bail, not having
their cases compounded, or having their cases heard by a magistrate. People who
participate in illegal or risky behaviors that cause harm to society or another
human being are frequently considered to be criminally liable, as this is one
of the primary reasons why they are held accountable for their actions.
One of the reasons to press criminal
charges against an individual is to serve as a deterrent for those who might be tempted to
engage in behavior that is unethical or detrimental to society. Even though it
is illegal to attempt suicide, that does not prevent people from going through
with it and killing themselves in the end. Because of their mental state, those
who are suicidal will not ask about the consequences of their actions or
whether or not they will be punished for what they have done. The use of jails
and other types of punishment does not
seem to have the effect of discouraging suicidal behavior. On the other side,
punishment will not assist a person who is suicidal since it may aggravate
their situation without rehabilitating them, which in turn may drive them to
take their life. There are a still a few countries in Africa, like Ghana,
Kenya, and Uganda, that have made it illegal to commit suicide. It is for us to
see whether India is a country that wants to be grouped with the aforementioned
countries in terms of treatment of mental illness.
A few other Asian countries,
including Bangladesh, Malaysia, Myanmar, Oman, Pakistan, Syria, and the United
Arab Emirates, continue to
criminalize
attempt to suicide. On the other hand, physician-assisted euthanasia is only
legal in China, hence the practice is illegal everywhere else. In the United
States, only Guyana and the Bahamas have legislation that makes it illegal to
attempt to take one's own life. On the other hand, euthanasia is illegal in
most of the United States, with the exception of a few states. Although some
countries prohibit physician-assisted suicide and euthanasia, the Suicide Act in the
United Kingdom makes it such that attempted suicide is not a crime.
People who try to end their own life
should not be subject to legal consequences of incarceration by the State since
they are not causing any harm to anybody else or to society as a whole when
they do this. John Locke believed that the state should not interfere with
an individual's liberty provided that person's actions did not negatively
impact the rights of another person.
The majority of countries, including
those that have decriminalized attempts at suicide, have laws that make it
illegal to abet, aid, or encourage someone else to commit suicide. However, the
nature of the actions that are considered illegal and the nature of the
punishments vary greatly from country to country. There are 192 countries in
the world, and 142 of them have laws that make it illegal to aid or encourage
someone else to commit suicide. These prohibitions can include jail sentences.
There is a lot of variety in the language of what is included in these
Statutes, and once again, the level of enforcement varies widely from place to
place. A sampling of the specific wording of what is deemed to be illegal in
the laws provides some examples of the variety of descriptions of what is
prohibited. For instance, "complicity in suicide" is prohibited in Bhutan and several other
countries; "suicide pacts" are prohibited in Kenya; "direct
provoking of a minor to suicide" is prohibited in Djibouti; "driving
someone to suicide" or making a suicide attempt by way of threatening,
cruel treatment, or systematic humiliation of human dignity.
Sociological implications:
Some people believe that the point
of punishment is to teach people not to engage in illegal behavior in the
future or contradict behaviors that have become normalized in society. It has
not been demonstrated that threatening someone with jail time has a
preventative effect on those who want to attempt suicide. In spite of the fact
that one may anticipate that the number of suicide fatalities that are documented
would be lower in nations where suicide is regarded as a taboo and criminal,
the suicide rate is in fact, not lower
in nations that have laws that penalize those who attempt suicide.
As a consequence of retribution
theory, it is commonly believed that the criminal committed a purposeful act of
will in order to warrant the application of punishment. According to Mishara and Tousignant (2004) and the World Health
Organization (2014), it is generally accepted that individuals who
attempt suicide have a mental disorder that makes it difficult for them to make
decisions that are reasonable or "right." This is a theory that has
gained widespread acceptance in recent years. Liberals, as a general rule, are
of the opinion that penalizing people who attempt suicide is a reflection of society's
animosity against individuals who go against predetermined social standards
and/or religion.
A criminal may also be made to
suffer public humiliation as part of their sentence in order to illustrate the
level of disapproval felt by the general population. During the 18th century, the body of an inhabitant of
Quebec, Canada who had committed suicide was paraded through the streets and
hung in public. As a consequence of this, the bodies of suicide victims are
frequently dishonored and buried in locations that are not within cemeteries in
many civilizations in the modern world. Putting someone behind bars for having
attempted suicide is a frequent tactic to humiliate and degrade both the person
and their family in the eyes of other people, as long as they are living.
Recommendations:
It is necessary to push for the decriminalization
of suicide in countries where it is considered as a crime rather than as a
problem related to mental health. These countries include the United States and
Canada. In addition, it would be useful to urge the formation of an
international standard definition of "aiding, abetting, and assisting in
suicide," which encompasses all of these activities. In some countries, it
is only criminal to make plans to end one's own life, while in others, the
concept of what constitutes illegal behavior is so broadly interpreted that
even a passing remark to someone who is having suicidal thoughts might be
construed as encouraging them to go through with it. Legislation and
International law need to address the issue of aiding and abetting suicide in the
cyberspace, as the internet is rapidly being used to encourage suicide and
supply knowledge on different methods of committing suicide.
In countries where decriminalization
of suicide has not taken place and is not going to take place, it is
nevertheless vital to establish ways for giving mental health treatment to
people who have attempted suicide. In the past, countries with liberal beliefs
have been the ones to decriminalizesuicide by spreading the view that people
who attempt suicide are not knowingly going against prevalent religious and
cultural norms. This is done despite the fact that it is necessary to respect
religious and cultural values.
The availability of empirical
evidence demonstrates a common inability to make an informed and competent decision
as a result of a mental illness, the use of substances, or being in a state of
crisis. In addition, a person often makes an attempt at suicide when they are
experiencing an intense amount of psychological suffering, and those who
attempt suicide are more likely to have been under the influence of alcohol or
drugs at the time of their attempt. The overwhelming majority of people who
attempt suicide have a requirement for mental health treatment and support
services (WHO, 2014). We have reached the conclusion
that the course of action that is likely to be the most successful in the great
majority of circumstances is to approach the problem of suicidal behavior as a
psychological and mental health issue.
Since the Mental Healthcare Act of
2017 has been passed into law, there have been debates and discussions on the
fact that Section 309 of the Indian Penal Code, which was passed in 1860, may
resultantly be repealed. Many people now believe that Section 309 is no longer
in effect as a consequence of the Mental Healthcare Act of 2017, which was
passed in 2017. However, this new law did not result in the repeal of the
aforementioned Section 309; rather, it restricted the applicability of that
section. According to Section 115 of the Act, a person is deemed to be
suffering from excessive stress when they attempt suicide; as a result, they
are not liable to prosecution or punishment in accordance with Section 309 of
the Indian Penal Code, 1860.
It is crucial to notice that the Act
does not explicitly repeal Clause 309 or make it applicable to all attempts at
suicide. The only exception to this is the portion that presumes the individual
who attempted suicide was under "severe stress."
Conclusion:
In spite of the fact that suicide is
now legal, we continue to make a distinction between the act of attempting
suicide by oneself and the act of having another person assist, provoke, or
encourage suicidalbehaviour. Even in jurisdictions that make euthanasia and
assisted suicide legal for persons who are suffering from a terminal illness or
a condition that has no end in sight, the act of assisting another person in
taking their own life is controversial. When dealing with this reality, it is
crucial to be able to differentiate between a person's psychological or
emotional anguish and a medical condition that is becoming worse or has been
going on for a long time.
Regardless of one's religious or
utilitarian allegiances or one's Western liberal orientation, there is general
consensus that supporting and aiding a suicide is morally wrong and ought to be
punished. This is the case even if one is a Western liberal. However, there is
no consensus that the person who is being assisted has a wounded conscious
will. Cooley (2007) found that only a small number of
rational suicides were respected. Hence, there is much ambiguity on which
philosophy of punishment is more enlightened when considering our strong desire
to punish those who help and abet those who commit crimes. It does not matter
how we look at it; whether it is an act of retribution or an attempt to control
the free and logical decision-making capacity of another individual, is a hard problem.
This Blog is Authored by Shruti Avinash, a third year student of the NALSAR University of Law.
