Driving to suicide
Self-care
A surge in suicides among cancer patients has been recorded in MoscowEvgeny Safronov, Irina Reznik, Newspaper.
Eight cancer patients have committed suicide in Moscow over the past two weeks, tired of fighting a deadly disease, a law enforcement source told Interfax. According to the interlocutor of the agency, all the victims suffered from oncological diseases of various forms. In some cases, suicide notes were found at the scene of suicide, in which the deceased asked not to blame anyone and reported that they were tired of fighting the disease. The Vice-mayor of Moscow for Social Affairs Leonid Pechatnikov was not surprised by this news. The official linked the increase in suicides with the spring exacerbation of mental disorders, which are characteristic, including cancer patients.
"The fact that the surge in suicides is happening right now, against the background of an early stormy spring, is not surprising. People don't want to torture themselves and others. This is their version of euthanasia," concluded Pechatnikov.
People who were desperate to fight a serious illness and committed suicide in the last two weeks chose different ways of leaving life.
So, on March 12, a 71-year-old retired colonel of the Ministry of Internal Affairs jumped from the seventh floor of a residential building on Tourist Street. On March 15, a 75-year-old pensioner shot himself with a hunting rifle in Maryina Grove, and the next day a 76-year-old woman hanged herself in an apartment on the Frunzenskaya Embankment.
On March 17, a 52-year-old Muscovite was also found hanged in his garage on an Open Highway, and on Tyulenev Street on March 19, a 53-year-old man committed suicide by cutting his throat. On March 18, retired Major General Boris Saplin shot himself in his apartment in the Dosflot passage from a premium pistol. On Sunday, March 23, a 69-year-old pensioner jumped out of the window of his apartment on the Altufyevsky Highway.
The last such case occurred last Monday in Cheryomushki: a 72-year-old man, as a law enforcement source said, "was found with a knife in his side." The wife of the deceased claims that he repeatedly expressed thoughts of suicide.
Of all these cases, the federal media focused only on the suicide of General Saplin and drew analogies with another military man who committed suicide, Rear Admiral Vyacheslav Apanasenko. The admiral shot himself with a premium pistol on February 10 and left a note with the text: "I ask you not to blame anyone, except the Ministry of Health and the government."
The admiral's family did not have time to collect all the signatures of a prescription for strong painkillers for a relative in the right time. The death of the military caused a great resonance and attracted the attention of Deputy Prime Minister Olga Golodets, who instructed to find out why the rear admiral did not receive timely assistance. The head of the Federal Drug Control Service, Viktor Ivanov, demanded that his subordinates simplify the procedure for obtaining analgesics. The Ministry of Health also initiated an inspection of the institutions where Apanasenko was treated.
However, this time the vice-mayor of Moscow, Pechatnikov, commenting on the surge of voluntary departures from life, said that "in none of these cases were there any claims against medical organizations," blaming everything only on the spring aggravation.
Meanwhile, in the civilized world, this cannot be considered the norm: doctors try to help maintain the quality of life even for doomed people. The need to create psychological and oncological services in the country's clinics as an obligatory part of treatment was previously mentioned by Pechatnikov himself. "Several decades ago, some diseases were considered psychosomatic: these are the familiar "ulcers from nerves" or "hypertension from stress." Today, next to psychosomatics, a completely new direction is becoming, when mental disorders gradually arise from diseases of the body. And the most serious case, of course, is oncology. And cancer patients and their families simply need to be provided with qualified psychotherapeutic assistance," he said last year at the first session of the International School of Psychosocial Oncology.
Integrative oncology and psychoncology have long been the standard of patient care in Europe and the USA. However, this is not the case in the Russian healthcare system.
As there are no training programs for psychiatrists in the diagnosis and treatment of concomitant oncological diseases of mental disorders. As a result, severe patients are most often left to themselves. According to Irina Morkovkina, coordinator of educational and educational programs of the Movement against Cancer, a psychotherapist, candidate of medical sciences, there should be a psychologist or a psychotherapist on the staff of each oncological institution.
However, in 90% there is not even a regular rate. "There used to be such rates, now they have been restored, but so far these are cat's tears," she notes.
Moreover, psychological help is needed at all stages of cancer, not only in the last stage. Such help helps a person to correctly understand the diagnosis and "cope with himself". "In our society, the notion has become entrenched that if you are a cancer patient, you will definitely die," the expert notes. – In many countries there is no such thing. But after crippling operations, harsh chemotherapy, and a sharp decline in the quality of life, a person needs professional support. Oncologists do not have any special education or time for this."
As for patients in the terminal stage, according to Morkovkina, in most cases they are completely abandoned, and their relatives are not paid attention. "We don't even have enough hospices, not to mention psychological work with patients at remote stages, which are simply forgotten today, sending them to die by themselves," she notes. This problem is directly related to the underdevelopment of palliative care, Morkovkina notes. In her opinion, in existing hospices, sick people receive the necessary attention, but this is a drop in the bucket. The number of institutions capable of providing assistance to serious patients in the last stages (both in inpatient and outpatient settings) should be increased many times: according to the chief oncologist of the Ministry of Health Valery Chissov, the incidence of cancer is growing by 1.5% per year. About 500 thousand cancer patients are detected in Russia every year.
According to the expert of the National Medical Chamber, a member of the board of the League of Defenders of Patients' Rights, Alexey Starchenko, at the heart of all the suicides that have occurred is the lack of medical care, which the metropolitan authorities did not focus on. And law enforcement agencies should find out if there are any signs of an article about driving to suicide, he believes.
"For cancer patients, adequate medical care is one of the most important components of the comfort zone," the expert believes. – If a person receives adequate medical care, there will be no reason for suicide. There will be no strain on relatives, their own strength due to the lack of medicines, pain relief, endless proof of their rights to it." Therefore, according to the expert, it is necessary to talk about suicide, and not about euthanasia.
"Euthanasia (banned in Russia – "Newspaper.Ru") is the satisfaction of a request for termination of life by a medical worker when all the possibilities of medicine have been exhausted – the patient has received maximum attention, is anesthetized, is in a hospice, but can no longer fight morally," Starchenko notes. – Here, the Investigative Committee should conduct a verification of the composition of the article on suicide in each case."
"Departmental inspections "in general" are nothing more than an attempt to deflect officials from responsibility who have not provided proper medical care," the expert is sure.
– This also happened in the case of Admiral Apanasenko's suicide: the deputy head physician with the right to sign the prescription left ahead of time, and it was her absence from the workplace that led to the fact that the patient did not receive an anesthetic. But, despite the direct causal relationship, no criminal case was initiated, she was simply fired, and the case was closed."
Portal "Eternal youth" http://vechnayamolodost.ru26.03.2014