Самоубийството в късна възраст между патологията и автономността: локални исторически следи и актуални статистически данни
Suicide in the Elderly between Pathology and Autonomy: Local Historical Traces and New Statistical Data

Summary/Abstract: The problem of suicide in non-terminally ill elderly people is extremely complex both morally and as a social policy and legal regulation. In this article we demonstrate how strong currently is the temptation of experts of different types, but most often those coming from the psychiatric field, to accept by default that a state in which a person defines suicide as his/her best interest invariably pertains to the zone of mental illness. However, a resistance, both professional and activist, intensifies. Against the background of this contemporary situation, the history of socialist psychiatry in Bulgaria reveals the curious fact that the ideological contradiction faced by the local experts actually left room for individual autonomy. It is the autonomy of a lonely, abandoned and suffering elderly from late socialism, but still recognized by experts as autonomy and not as illness. Current statistics (2009-2018) suggest that today the contours of the same deeply suffering figure are clearly visible. Unfortunately the expert and public discussion on the ways we die in Bulgaria lies still ahead.

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