Kwantlen instructor fights to open the end-of-life dialogue

He knows about the intimate details better than most people, and that’s why he isn’t going to lie about it.

“ If I had to characterize the relationship, I’d say it’s a very uncomfortable one,” Russel Ogden said about the common ground between suicide and education.

A professor in the department of sociology at Kwantlen Polytechnic University since 2006, Ogden’s academic research and lectures focus on euthanasia and assisted death.

His third-year course, Aspects of Dying and Death, and a fourth-year course, Sociolegal Aspects of Assisted Suicide, both invite students to examine the issues surrounding suicide and assisted death in society.

“We’re all very uncomfortable with these topics,” Ogden said with a deep sigh, “and I think that an education system needs to spend time with the uncomfortable topics. That’s how we get change. It’s only by addressing these uncomfortable topics that can we can improve and advance society. “

Recently, Ogden has had plenty of opportunity to discuss the complex moral and social issues.

On Sept. 22, Metro Vancouver reported that Paul Whitney, chief librarian of the Vancouver Public Library, had banned Exit International, an Australian suicide education and advocacy group, from holding public workshops at the library’s central branch in downtown Vancouver.

According to its website, Exit International is the leading voluntary euthanasia and end of life education and advocacy organization. Dr. Philip Nitschke, author of The Peaceful Pill, a guidebook on methods for ending life if elderly or terminally ill, heads the group.

Whitney told Metro that after police and legal experts informed him that holding the workshops in the library the workshops would violate the Criminal Code, he decided to bar the group’s presentations.

Facing media pressure, Whitney and the library board heard from B.C. Civil Liberties Association executive director David Eby at their board meeting Sept. 24.

Eby described the library board as an ally to the cause of free expression, but he reprimanded the board for their hesitation, reminding them of their duty.

“ Because there is significant public demand and significant need for it, and this is a discussion rather than a promotion or an encouragement, we would suggest that the library consider its obligation to the Charter of Free Expression and let this discussion go ahead,” Eby told the executives. “We don’t think that there is any coincidence that the library has in its mandate the mission towards intellectual freedom and the ability to discuss even controversial ideas.”

On the following Monday, Sept. 28, Ogden had a letter to the editor published in the Vancouver Sun that echoed Eby’s opinion.

“Libraries and universities are built on values that promote education, freedom of thought and freedom of speech. When trusted institutions censor talk about suicide, not only do they undermine the core values on which they are built, they diminish our humanity,” he wrote.

Ogden insists that while assisted might be illegal in B.C., there is nothing illegal about Nitchke’s workshops and the advice that it offers to those considering end-of-life options. Furthermore, he said that the library already stocks books similar to literature that Exit International provides, and that providing a social opportunity for people to discuss suicide might change someone’s views.

“I think that they would be doing a much bigger service to people if they let them talk about it in a group,” said Ogden. “Because, if in that context, if you have someone who is anxious or perhaps suicidal, impulsively so, other people in the crowd will recognize that. They might say ‘Are you O.K? Do you want to talk? Feel like going for a coffee afterwards?’ They might make a friend. That might turn them around.”

In the first part of his letter to the editor, Ogden made mention of another Canadian news item, one that hit closer to home for him than a dispute at his public library.

On Sept. 15, the CBC reported that 19-year-old student Michel Gariepy, a student at the University of Ottawa, had jumped to his death from the 15th floor balcony of his residence on the evening of Sept. 12. The news report noted that Gariepy was well liked by those who knew him and regarded as intelligent and “forward thinking.” Ogden’s daughter might have felt the same way, but she never got the chance to meet Gariepy, even though she is in her first year at Ottawa and she lives in the residence once inhabited by Gariepy.

“She’s just left home, she’s gone to Ottawa and she’s 17 years old,” Ogden said of his daughter’s situation, “ and some guy jumps from the 15th floor in her building. Welcome to university, right?”

Frustrated, Ogden describes the events that followed as typical of a post-suicide crisis situation. Police and firefighter units came to assess the scene; the pavement was hosed down; a memorial is erected; and the victim is remembered, by some.

He said that most people, such as his daughter, didn’t know the victim or anything about the circumstances surrounding the death and have no safe place to voice their concern over what has happened or their thoughts about suicide, even in a post –secondary educational setting.

Ogden believes that this lack of opportunity for discussion at a time of crisis is a symptom of a greater ill. He thinks that if there was a more open attitude to discussing suicidal thoughts and mental illness, people would be less likely to reach the point of feeling to take their own live.

“If we really are troubled by suicide, the way that we should address that trouble is by making it a social issue that is worthy of discussion,” Ogden said.

“Suicide is something that is after-the-fact, but when people are contemplating it, we need to be more open to having that discussion. People often think about suicide, but they don’t engage in any self-harming or even suicide attempts, let alone actual suicide. We should be able to talk about how we have these thoughts in a safer place, where we can be confident that expressing these thoughts isn’t going to result in an intervention that is embarrassing, shameful and excessive.”

Ogden said that the “professional” response to suicide deters people from talking about their suicidal thoughts. According Ogden, in the majority of cases, people are hospitalized, scrutinized and viewed as safety risks rather than people in sensitive states of mental health. Knowing this, people choose not to tell their loved ones or community supports.

Though he acknowledges that public education and community services can go a long way towards promoting awareness and discussion of suicide and mental health issues, Ogden thinks that the first step towards changing our attitudes is something simpler.

“It starts with some basic common sense…that is, if we see something that is upsetting us about someone’s behavior, we talk to them about it. That if we’re having difficult thoughts, our own thoughts about self-harm or suicide, that we can express it. You can create all the programs that you want, whether they be courses, institutions, suicide prevention, resources all of that. But really, my call would be…let’s use some common sense and be decent to one another.”