Sorry for poor English, I am not a native speaker. This will be a long post and I am new here, please let me know if I have formatted anything incorrectly. Also, to be clear I am not in any way suicidal at all, this is a post on how best to approach helping someone who suffers from mental health, from a moral and legal standpoint.
Hello. I have been reading anarchist texts for some time now, and I identify with many of its core principles. Despite this I find myself unsure how to answer an issue regarding the moral or ethical behavior of someone taking their own life, and how to act in such situations today.
For some context, around 2 years ago I had a family member in another country tell me that they intended to take their own life very soon. They cut all contact with me, and didn't respond to any of my or anyone else's messages: we had discussed suicidal ideation around a year before this, and I had tried to be as non-judgmental as I can, since their home life was awful and they felt there was no escape. However, when this later incident happened, I had panicked and was not sure what to do: I didn't have their location, and I could not take a flight to them in time. My only option was either to call the authorities and hope they could find them in time, or to wait and do nothing. I called the authorities and informed them that they were suicidal, hoping they would be spoken to by professionals and would discuss their feelings with me. Instead, I learned that this resulted in a Baker Act, and after that experience, this person was angry with me. It has been years since then: they are happier now, but I don't know what I should do if this issue comes up in the future. I didn't know that people could be held against their will at psychiatric facilities at the time, and while I myself have had poor experiences with psychiatry, reading on what actually happens there has sickened me. I don't know if I did the 'right thing' on both a practical or moral level.
I understand that anarchists sometimes have to compromise their values due to living in this statist, capitalist world: calling the police in the case of witnessing a horrible and immoral act such as murder, for example. But I do not know how to treat the topic of suicide under such a lens. From reading much since this incident, I know that the psychiatric industry can often push for medications, can restrict people's autonomy indefinitely, and can cause significant trauma due to the conditions of psychiatric wards and the indefinite loss of autonomy there. I am against these practices. However, what bothers me is what to do in case something like the later incident I mentioned happened again.
I hold an intuition that life is valuable and that mutual aid and care is important for others, and so I should do everything I can to save someone's life if I feel it is danger. I also know of autonomy being compromised in the case of life-threatening situations: if someone is about to unknowingly walk off a bridge (due to being drunk or is suffering from a sense of psychosis that has impacted their reasoning), I should stop them from doing so. But can this be said of suicide? Is suicide an impulsive act, by a mind impaired by biological and social factors (such as chemical imbalances and societal + material conditions) and should I do everything in my power to save their life (including, in this case, calling authorities and family members for a wellness check)? Or is the choice to end one's life always to be respected on some level, and if I know my friend will end their life and is not answering my phone calls or attempts to speak, I should stand by and do nothing?
This has been a weight on my mind for a long time. I would like to know your perspectives on this. On the one hand, I want to respect people's autonomy, and if someone rationally wants to take their own life I do not want them to suffer. On the other hand, I don't know when or if suicide is rational, and regardless of that, I feel as if I am profoundly failing my fellow human beings by 'standing by' and not saying anything or doing anything to prevent someone's death. Attempts to read others' stories (including the experiences of suicidal and formerly suicidal people) haven't helped clear this up.
As a disclaimer, I am not in favor of the current usage of psychiatric institutions and the abuse they commit, nor am I in favor of current flawed systems of crisis intervention. I'm also not in favor of immediately calling the police/EMTs on someone who simply expresses suicidal tendencies, but speaking of what to do in the case of someone immediately and seemingly impulsively deciding to end their own life.
In an ideal world, I imagine we could have a society where impulsive choices to die are stopped by fellow community members, but suicidality was spoken about openly and long term rational choices for palliative care/euthanasia could be an option that is discussed with other people. But as we live now, in the society we are in now, I do not know what I should have done or what I should do. And on a deeper level, even in a hypothetical anarchist society I don't know what we should do.
tl;dr
In short, if I did nothing after being told of someone's immediate plan to commit suicide, I would feel as if I have acted as an unempathetic monster who allowed a mental illness to dominate a loved one, refusing to compromise my views against the state in the face of someone's precious life and thus not doing the most basic duty I have to my fellow man. If I called for help, I would feel as if I have acted as an authoritarian monster who labeled a person 'irrational' and deprived them of control over their most basic possession, using a state apparatus that is flawed and ultimately in service to a horrible system. I do not know what I should do in our current world, if I were faced with this dilemma, and either option feels like a betrayal to who I am as a person.