EUTHANASIA - A CHOICE BETWEEN DEATH AND DEATH (THE VIEW OF EUROPE AND RUSSIA)

В современном научном дискурсе появляется много интересных тем, рассматривающих самые острые проблемы социума, и одна из них - табуированная тема - эвтаназия. Эта проблема носит междисциплинарный характер. Философы, в рамках биоэтики, осмысливают нравственные аспекты, психологи «решают» дилемму «хорошо/плохо», «убийство/самоубийство/гуманный акт помощи», юристы прорабатывают нормативно-правовые акты по защите, зачастую трудносовместимых, прав пациентов/врачей/выгодополучателей, медики, сталкиваясь с «невыносимой физической и психологической болью» пациентов и близких родственников, предлагают свои варианты решения проблемы, физики, химики, генетики не остаются в стороне, развивая нейротехнологии, регенеративную медицину, фармакологию, био- и генные технологии. Политики, разворачивая широкие дискуссии о морально-этической стороне этого вопроса, российском традиционализме, либеральных ценностях, устраивая политические дебаты, разрабатывают дивиденды. Социологи, рассматривая эту социальную проблему, замеряют «градус общественного мнения». Общество, как живой сложносоставной организм, опираясь на свои ментальные программы, реагирует по-разному: от полного неприятия («человеческая жизнь - божественный дар») до однозначной легализации процедуры «достойной смерти, качественной смерти». Одна из важных проблем медицинского профессионального сообщества - проблема обеспечения «достойной смерти» неизлечимо больных пациентов и связанная с ней проблема эвтаназии. Мнение полярно. На понимание медиками проблем легализации эвтаназии оказывают влияние разновекторные факторы: во-первых, ценностные установки, во-вторых, опыт и место работы (врачи паллиативных отделений, хосписов, онкологи, имеющие большой стаж работы, более склоны к легализации эвтаназии), в-третьих, техническое, технологическое, фармакологическое обеспечение медицинского учреждения, в-четвертых, нормативно-правовая составляющая. Many interesting topics appear in the modern scientific discourse. They consider the most acute problems of society and one of them is a taboo topic - euthanasia. This problem is of an interdisciplinary nature. Philosophers within the framework of bioethics comprehend the moral aspects. Psychologists "solve" the dilemma of "good/bad", "murder/suicide/humane act of assistance". Lawyers are working on regulatory legal acts to protect the rights of patients/doctors/beneficiaries, which are often difficult to replace. Doctors, facing the "unbearable physical and psychological pain" of patients and close relatives, offer their own solutions to the problem, physicists, chemists, geneticists do not stay away, developing neurotechnologies, regenerative medicine, pharmacology, bio and gene technologies. Politicians also do not stand aside, unfolding broad discussions, arranging political debates, developing dividends. Sociologists considering this social problem measure the "degree of public opinion". Society as a living complex organism relying on its mental programs reacts in different ways: from complete rejection to legalization of this procedure. One of the important problems of the medical professional community is the problem of ensuring a “dignified death” of terminally ill patients and the related problem of euthanasia. The opinion of doctors is polar. Doctor`s understanding of the problems of legalizing euthanasia is influenced by various factors: firstly, values, secondly, experience and place of work (doctors of palliative departments, hospices, oncologists with long work experience are more inclined to legalize euthanasia), thirdly, technical, technological, pharmacological support of a medical institution, and fourthly, the regulatory component

The Nexus of Physical and Psychological Pain: Consequences for Mortality and Implications for Medical Sociology

Although physical pain lies at the intersection of biology and social conditions, a sociology of pain is still in its infancy. We seek to show how physical and psychological pain are jointly parts of a common expression of despair, particularly in relation to mortality. Using the 2002–2014 National Health Interview Survey Linked Mortality Files (N = 228,098), we explore sociodemographic differences in the intersection of physical and psychological pain (referred to as the “pain–distress nexus”) and its relationship to mortality among adults ages 25 to 64. Results from regression and event history models reveal that differences are large for the combination of the two, pointing to an overlooked aspect of health disparities. The combination of both high distress and high pain is most prevalent and most strongly predictive of mortality among socioeconomically disadvantaged, non-Hispanic whites. These patterns have several implications that medical sociology is well positioned to address.

The Relationship of Situational Guilt with Conscientious Awareness for Female Students of Kindergarten Department

The problem of the current paper arises from the individual’s need to hold himself accountable and reconsider his behaviors or actions when many situations passing him in daily in which he lives and keeps into contact with those around him. This situation is accompanied by either psychological pain or the individual’s feeling of relief, each according to the nature of the personality of this individual and his emotional state. The individual’s feeling of guilt is nothing but a necessity for the individual to discipline himself and address the mistakes and abusive actions in order to stop them once and for all, provided that the situation does not reach the feeling of imaginary guilt, which is considered obstructing his thinking and leads him to give errors greater than their normal size, which is what happens in patients having depression. Al-Ansari’s study (2001) maintained that university students suffer from situational guilt at a rate of (8.9%), while the percentage of university female students reached (17.4%). This gives an indication that female students are more likely to feel situational guilt than male students and that these percentages are serious and cannot be underestimated. Because the kindergarten students are part of the university students, their role as future teachers for an important segment of society is the focus, namely Kindergarten Dept. The kindergarten teacher should be more responsible and more psychologically and emotionally balanced in its dealings with the different situations that it brings together with the child and be alert to the conscience to achieve equality between children, taking into account the individual differences between them, so the problem of the current research was identified by the following question: Is there a relationship between situational guilt and conscientious awareness for kindergarten students? The current research aims to identify the relationship between situational guilt and conscientious awareness among female kindergarten students. The research sample consisted of (300) female students from the Kindergarten Department, and to achieve the goal of the research, two scales were prepared: the Situational Guilt Scale and the Conscientious Awareness Scale for the Kindergarten Department students. Through reviewing the literature and previous studies, the researcher identified (32) items for the Situational Guilt Scale and (24) to measure the final form of conscientious awareness, the validity, and reliability of the two scales were confirmed. After using the statistical methods, the research reached the following results: • The research sample has a high degree of situational guilt. • The research sample has a high degree of conscientious awareness. • There is a high correlation between situational guilt and conscientious awareness among female students of the Kindergarten Department.

Validation of a Chinese version of the Tolerance for Mental Pain Scale-10 with Chinese college students

We built and validated a Chinese version of the Tolerance for Mental Pain Scale-10 (TMPS-10). Participants were 840 college students in Jilin, China. The TMPS-10 consists of two dimensions: managing the pain and enduring the pain. In our study Cronbach's alphas were .80 and .83, respectively, and test–retest reliability coefficients were .78 and .72, respectively, for these two dimensions. Exploratory factor analysis results demonstrate that the two dimensions accounted for 61.58% of the total variance. Confirmatory factor analysis results show that the two-factor model fit the sample data well. As the Chinese version of the TMPS-10 meets the requirements for a psychometric tool, it can be used to evaluate Chinese college students' tolerance of psychological pain.

“And Her Heart Fluttered”: The Psychopathology of Desire in the Argonautika

<p>This thesis investigates the way that Apollonios constructs Medea’s psyche and body in response to contemporary medical and philosophical influences in order to portray realistically the way that erōs manifests itself in Medea as both sickness and mental illness. Apollonios delves into Medea’s psyche and exposes how it functions in moments of intense desire, pain, indecision and introspection while under the powerful sways of erōs. Medea’s erōs manifests as erratic and dangerous behaviour and crippling indecision, the analysis of which is done in light of Chrusippos’ discussion of Euripides’ Medea’s akrasia. Apollonios draws from Euripides’ version to depict Medea in a different stage of her life, making a similar life-altering decision: whether or not to help Jason and betray her family or stay at home and watch him die. Apollonios makes the audience sympathize with Medea by showing her as a victim of destructive erōs and by exhibiting her emotional suffering. He heightens the degree that the internal is depicted and the very fact that he does internalize Medea shows an interest in her side of the story. It humanizes her to see her motivations, her fears, her desires and her moral dilemmas. Apollonios twists the image of Medea that an audience may expect to see by focusing, in Book 3 at least, almost entirely on her maidenhood and her struggle between exercising maidenly shame and giving in to the temptation of Jason. Apollonios makes the audience understand and sympathize with Medea by delving into the workings of her psyche and explaining her pleasure and pain, and most importantly, explaining why she cannot act rationally. erōs also manifests itself inside Medea and in turn this is expressed in Medea’s outward appearance as medical symptoms, like those of fever. In addition, by incorporating contemporary medical discoveries like the nervous system Apollonios is able to utilize the new conceptions of sense-perception to realistically show the way that destructive emotions manifest themselves as perceivable physical pain. Apollonios draws on philosophical and medical influences to heighten the realism of Medea’s physical and psychological pain and pleasure while simultaneously providing a forceful warning of the destructiveness of erōs’ nature.</p>

“And Her Heart Fluttered”: The Psychopathology of Desire in the Argonautika

<p>This thesis investigates the way that Apollonios constructs Medea’s psyche and body in response to contemporary medical and philosophical influences in order to portray realistically the way that erōs manifests itself in Medea as both sickness and mental illness. Apollonios delves into Medea’s psyche and exposes how it functions in moments of intense desire, pain, indecision and introspection while under the powerful sways of erōs. Medea’s erōs manifests as erratic and dangerous behaviour and crippling indecision, the analysis of which is done in light of Chrusippos’ discussion of Euripides’ Medea’s akrasia. Apollonios draws from Euripides’ version to depict Medea in a different stage of her life, making a similar life-altering decision: whether or not to help Jason and betray her family or stay at home and watch him die. Apollonios makes the audience sympathize with Medea by showing her as a victim of destructive erōs and by exhibiting her emotional suffering. He heightens the degree that the internal is depicted and the very fact that he does internalize Medea shows an interest in her side of the story. It humanizes her to see her motivations, her fears, her desires and her moral dilemmas. Apollonios twists the image of Medea that an audience may expect to see by focusing, in Book 3 at least, almost entirely on her maidenhood and her struggle between exercising maidenly shame and giving in to the temptation of Jason. Apollonios makes the audience understand and sympathize with Medea by delving into the workings of her psyche and explaining her pleasure and pain, and most importantly, explaining why she cannot act rationally. erōs also manifests itself inside Medea and in turn this is expressed in Medea’s outward appearance as medical symptoms, like those of fever. In addition, by incorporating contemporary medical discoveries like the nervous system Apollonios is able to utilize the new conceptions of sense-perception to realistically show the way that destructive emotions manifest themselves as perceivable physical pain. Apollonios draws on philosophical and medical influences to heighten the realism of Medea’s physical and psychological pain and pleasure while simultaneously providing a forceful warning of the destructiveness of erōs’ nature.</p>

An Interpretation of Four Men's Experiences of Suicidality

<p>Mental health nurses are frequently called upon to care and provide intervention for suicidal men. While there is substantial literature on male suicide, far less is known about the understandings men have of their suicidal experiences. This study draws upon Gadamer's philosophical hermeneutics to explore the understandings that four men have had of their past suicidal experiences. The interpretations developed in this study, as far as possible, make explicit use of my own particular horizon of meaning as researcher and mental health nurse, and as such, seeks to engage with a tradition of mental health nursing. In addition, by consciously bringing an anti-essentialist perspective of masculinity to this process, I explore the way in which gender impacts on men's suicidality. The primary source of information for this study is in-depth, open-ended conversations with four men of European descent in their middle adult years who were asked to talk about their past experiences of suicidality. The interpretations developed here show that for these men, the hermeneutic fusion of history, language, and sociocultural context, provided limited possibilities with which they were able to construe themselves as 'fitting in' with normative standards. These constraints, that are otherwise taken-for-granted and invisible, became explicit through their experience of ongoing victimisation. Furthermore, early understandings of these experiences became a potent horizon of meaning from which they then came to understand later difficult experiences. Victimisation became constitutive of an understanding of self as fundamentally different and (hierarchically)'less-than' other men. Ultimately, suicidality emerged out of a background of ever-present psychological pain accompanying a construction of self as being unable to see themselves as ever 'fitting in'. These men did not regard themselves as having recovered from suicidality, but remain in a process of recovering. This process did not mean figuring out how to 'fit in', or become 'normal' men, but rather, to live meaningfully as men in spite of not 'fitting in' with the sociocultural ideal. This involved a process of repeated cycles of revisiting and reflecting on their personal histories from vantage points permitting understandings that opened up opportunities for personal growth and learning. Relationships were significant for either enabling or disabling this process. Recovering was therefore a continual and idiosyncratic process, rather than an outcome of a specific technique or knowledge. The position taken in this study is that mental health nursing seeks to engage with people and work with them in collaborative, respectful, human relationships. It is argued that mental health nurses work with an individual's situated understandings rather than delivering prescribed treatment determined by diagnosis. Hence, viewing suicidality as socioculturally situated and historically emergent suggests mental health nurses must closely attend to the way in which we bring ourselves into relationships with our clients so that we are then able to create opportunities for change. The exploration of suicidality in this study also alerts us to the possibility that through fusion with clients' pre-understandings, mental health intervention can inadvertently further constrain choices to survive.</p>

An Interpretation of Four Men's Experiences of Suicidality

<p>Mental health nurses are frequently called upon to care and provide intervention for suicidal men. While there is substantial literature on male suicide, far less is known about the understandings men have of their suicidal experiences. This study draws upon Gadamer's philosophical hermeneutics to explore the understandings that four men have had of their past suicidal experiences. The interpretations developed in this study, as far as possible, make explicit use of my own particular horizon of meaning as researcher and mental health nurse, and as such, seeks to engage with a tradition of mental health nursing. In addition, by consciously bringing an anti-essentialist perspective of masculinity to this process, I explore the way in which gender impacts on men's suicidality. The primary source of information for this study is in-depth, open-ended conversations with four men of European descent in their middle adult years who were asked to talk about their past experiences of suicidality. The interpretations developed here show that for these men, the hermeneutic fusion of history, language, and sociocultural context, provided limited possibilities with which they were able to construe themselves as 'fitting in' with normative standards. These constraints, that are otherwise taken-for-granted and invisible, became explicit through their experience of ongoing victimisation. Furthermore, early understandings of these experiences became a potent horizon of meaning from which they then came to understand later difficult experiences. Victimisation became constitutive of an understanding of self as fundamentally different and (hierarchically)'less-than' other men. Ultimately, suicidality emerged out of a background of ever-present psychological pain accompanying a construction of self as being unable to see themselves as ever 'fitting in'. These men did not regard themselves as having recovered from suicidality, but remain in a process of recovering. This process did not mean figuring out how to 'fit in', or become 'normal' men, but rather, to live meaningfully as men in spite of not 'fitting in' with the sociocultural ideal. This involved a process of repeated cycles of revisiting and reflecting on their personal histories from vantage points permitting understandings that opened up opportunities for personal growth and learning. Relationships were significant for either enabling or disabling this process. Recovering was therefore a continual and idiosyncratic process, rather than an outcome of a specific technique or knowledge. The position taken in this study is that mental health nursing seeks to engage with people and work with them in collaborative, respectful, human relationships. It is argued that mental health nurses work with an individual's situated understandings rather than delivering prescribed treatment determined by diagnosis. Hence, viewing suicidality as socioculturally situated and historically emergent suggests mental health nurses must closely attend to the way in which we bring ourselves into relationships with our clients so that we are then able to create opportunities for change. The exploration of suicidality in this study also alerts us to the possibility that through fusion with clients' pre-understandings, mental health intervention can inadvertently further constrain choices to survive.</p>