title: Depression and suicide are natural kinds: implications for physician-assisted suicide.
abstract: In this article, I argue that depression and suicide are natural kinds insofar as they are classes of abnormal behavior underwritten by sets of stable biological mechanisms. In particular, depression and suicide are neurobiological kinds characterized by disturbances in serotonin functioning that affect various brain areas (i.e., the amygdala, anterior cingulate, prefrontal cortex, and hippocampus). The significance of this argument is that the natural (biological) basis of depression and suicide allows for reliable projectable inferences (i.e., predictions) to be made about individual members of a kind. In the context of assisted suicide, inferences about the decision-making capacity of depressed individuals seeking physician-assisted suicide are of special interest. I examine evidence that depression can hamper the decision-making capacity of individuals seeking assisted suicide and discuss some implications.
authors.affiliation: Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies, Iowa State University, 402 Catt Hall, Ames, IA 50011-1306, USA. Electronic address: jtsou@iastate.edu.
authors.forename: Jonathan Y
authors.initials: JY
authors.lastname: Tsou
mesh_terms: D003657:Decision Making; D003863:Depression / Q000378:metabolism* / Q000523:psychology; D006801:Humans; D016743:Mental Competency; D008962:Models, Theoretical; D011570:Psychiatry; D059020:Suicidal Ideation; D017236:Suicide, Assisted
keywords: Assisted suicide; Depression; Monoamine hypothesis; Natural kinds; Suicide