Imagine a country similar to the USA but one that is not completely opposed to suicide. This country believes there can occasionally be situations where death can be preferable to living in pain (be it physical or emotional) and is willing to support suicide under very specific circumstances. However, the government still considers most attempted suicides to be poorly thought out permanent solutions to temporary problems that should be avoided.
Thus the government puts in place a process for legal government assisted suicide, one designed to determine rather suicide is actually a valid option or if someone is more in need of support to prevent a suicide that is likely to be regretted. Please note I'm not asking rather or not any of this is moral, only how a society that believes it is would logically function.
I'm imagining in a society like this a person could go to one of a number of medical or psychological institutes to officially declare they are considering suicide. They would talk to a qualified psychologist who would determine their motives and compare them against criteria considering things like their ability to give informed consent, their physical pain, quality of life, life expectancy, the financial and emotional burden their life, or death, would place on their family and loved ones, likelihood that the situation leading to the decision could change in the future and rather other less severe options could address the problem, making sure they aren't being compelled to consider suicide by others etc. The psychologist would then decide rather the suicidal individual should be allowed to peruse suicide or get other treatment to prevent a suicide attempt.
The process to government assisted suicide may be slow, requiring most to try other treatment first or speaking to multiple experts. However, there would have to be a balancing act when it comes to length this process can take. If the whole process is known to be too slow then people considering suicide might decide it will take too long to go through and choose to commit suicide on their own without going through the government process. So they have to balance wanting to take enough time to make sure no one makes a bad decision with being considered fast enough that people will come to them in the first place.
So the question is what the rest of the process would look like, how long would the process from saying your considering suicide to government assistance likely to be and what are the steps along the way? How many people could be expected to go through the process rather then committing suicide on their own? Is there any way to legally encourage people to go through the government process rather then just committing suicide on their own? Could this process even lower the total number of suicides by getting many considering it psychological help even if they do sign off on a small number of assisted suicide?
