Looking at breakpoint, a daily look at an ever-changing culture through the lens of unchanging

truth for the Colson Center, I'm John Stone Street.

Recently, Dr. Jennifer Guadiana, a Colorado doctor of internal medicine, published a paper

in which he advocated for a physician-assisted suicide to be extended to patients who struggle

with anorexia.

Quote, anyone who wishes to keep striving for recovery despite exhaustion and depletion

should be wholeheartedly supported in doing so.

He wrote, but others simply cannot continue to fight.

Well her advocacy is not theoretical, Jennifer Brown with a Colorado Sun reported, quote,

one 36 year old woman died after ingesting the lethal doses prescribed by another doctor

with Guadiani serving as a consulting physician.

Another 36 year old woman died of severe malnutrition.

On the same day, she planned to take aid in dying medication prescribed by Guadiani.

Some in the medical community have responded to these accounts with outrage.

John Hopkins, behavioral scientist, Dr. Angela Guadar said this, quote, it's in direct

contradiction to treating mental illness, promoting hope for recovery and improving quality

of life for our patients.

Before adding, anorexia is treatable, not terminal, and ambivalence about treatment is

a characteristic of the psychiatric disorder.

In other words, seeing a mental health issue as untreatable is one of the main barriers

to effective treatment in the first place.

The primary role of a psychologist is to combat that assumption, not to enable it.

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