Speaking after news of the assisted suicides of conductor Sir Edward Downes and his wife Lady Joan last Friday at the Swiss Dignitas clinic, Sir Edward’s manager and long-term friend, Jonathon Groves, opined, ‘It was very typical of the way he lived his life. I do not think there is anyone anywhere who has lived his life with more self-determination than Ted did… The decision that he and Joan made to end their lives in the way they did was a very typically brave and courageous decision.’†

Assisted suicide is an issue, like abortion, that sharply divides. Its supporters argue that the individual’s ‘right to die’ is paramount; others worry that that any relaxation in the law will lead to abuses and place vulnerable people at risk.

A part of me wonders – in a way that probably doesn’t cross the mind of someone in chronic pain or in the final stages of a debilitating terminal illness – if the wider debate surrounding assisted suicide really is about personal freedom. Is individual liberty so important that, should a person choose to end their life then they should be assisted, guilt-free and responsibility-free, by someone else if they are unable to do so themselves?

Whether or not this kind of ethical argument was in the minds of the Downes, it certainly has been in the reporting. Technically, unlike the paralysed rugby player Daniel James, who ended his life at the Dignitas clinic last September, it would seem that the Downes wouldn't have actually needed assistance to commit suicide. An early version of an article on the BBC website did not mention the word ‘suicide’ at all, suggesting that some kind of political or personal statement was being made by the original author. This was hastily corrected after the omission and overall tone was pointed out by The Telegraph, which commented that the ‘creepy coverage… reads like Dignitas propaganda.’

Without having been there myself I can’t answer how I would act in similar circumstances. But the overriding significance of personal liberty is only one side of the coin. The other is not their personal pain, but the wider expectations and values that inform decisions as extreme as that taken by the Downes and as trivial as those we all take every day.

In praising Sir Edward in the way that he did, Jonathan Groves raises the issue of dependency: his friends’ preference for death rather than to allow external circumstances to dictate the shape of the rest of their lives. Whether this was the deciding factor in this case is unclear, but I believe that the expectation of independence and its corresponding fear, denial and distaste of dependency is a driving force in our culture, and one which inevitably impacts the question of assisted suicide as well as many other areas. This is a theme I see regularly in counselling: clients who are fiercely independent, who simply do not know how to be reliant on others even temporarily, whose identity is to cope in whatever circumstances, and for whom vulnerability is terrifying. When situations finally arise that are beyond their control and they are forced into the ‘weak’ position of the cared-for, rather than the ‘strong’ one of the carer, they do not know how to manage.

Countless cultural factors reinforce this denial of dependency, from the Lone Ranger motif of film and TV to housing and benefits policy focused on the individual at the expense of the family; from the necessity of mobility for work to the indulgence of easy divorce; from overstated ‘stranger danger’ even to the language we use, like the ‘burden’ of care. All of these both reflect and reinforce the mindset that the only person I need – or that I can and should rely on – is myself.

If that is the case, then it’s not really our liberty we’re concerned to preserve, it’s our autonomy. And while it’s impossible to tell whether this was the deciding factor which drove the Downes to travel to Switzerland, it is an undeniable and unhealthy cultural tendency. Given that isolation and individualism lie behind so many of our society’s problems, it’s probably time we started looking at issues like assisted suicide with a wider perspective than the individual.

† Daily Mirror: British conductor Sir Edward Downes and wife end lives at Swiss suicide clinic

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