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The questions which follow ask you to rate areas of your life in terms of pleasure/discomfort and feelings of accomplishment/failure. These often occur together but are not the same thing. You can get a sense of accomplishment from something that is unpleasant to do, and you can get pleasure from some activity that accomplishes nothing except to recharge you so that you can tackle a more worthwhile activity.
You are also asked to rate the importance of each area’s contribution to your sense of well-being. Very low pleasure and accomplishment ratings in very important areas identify problems that need improvement. If they cannot be improved, they will be the ones that provide the strongest pressure to leave.
Because this QOL assessment is supposed to help you to decide whether or to consider leaving, you are also asked to predict the potential for positive or negative change.
So, low or negative pleasure or accomplishment ratings in important areas that have low potential for improvement will be most significant in your decision as to whether to work on improving your life or to leave it.
5.1 Use this scale to rate Pleasure and Sense of Accomplishment
BA = Better than Acceptable
A = Acceptable
LA = Less than Acceptable
Use this scale to rate Importance
H = High
M = Moderate
L = Low
Use this scale to rate Potential for Positive or Negative Change:
+ = Positive change possible or expected
0 = None
- = Negative change possible or expected
Physical health:
Pleasure (BA, A, NA)
Sense of accomplishment (BA, A, NA)
Importance (H, M, L)
Potential for improvement (+, 0, -)
Emotional or psychological health:
Work or study:
Family:
Social life and friends:
Physical activity:
Artistic or expressive activity:
Involvement in other realities (reading, TV, computer games, other media):
Appetite or physiological satisfaction (sex, eating, drinking, medication, drugs):
Standard of living (money, investments, material possessions):
5.2 Your “self” contributes to your QOL. You live with your self all the time so how you get along with your self is important. How satisfied are you with your self? What is it like for you to live with yourself:
5.3 List anything else that contributes to your current QOL:
5.4 How much of the time do you feel good about the way things are going, because you are accomplishing things, because you are having a good time, or because you making progress towards improving your QOL:
Almost every day
Most days
Some days
Very few days
Almost never
I take life a day at a time and don’t look back.
5.5 The following question asks about your current levels of discomfort or suffering in various areas.
Fill in degree of suffering created by the situation using this rating scale:
There is a space for you to put how long your suffering has lasted (the duration) in days, weeks, months or years.
There is another space for you to indicate the direction you expect any change to take, using this scale:
+ = Change for the better possible or expected
0 = No change possible or expected
- = Change for the worse possible or expected
Painful or uncomfortable physical symptoms:
Degree(H, M, L) Duration: Change(+, 0, -):
Incapacitating physical problems or handicaps:
Emotional or psychological problems
Problems or frustrations with job, finances, or standard of living:
Problems, frustrations, or conflicts with family or friends:
Other interpersonal problems (loneliness, being misunderstood, being a target of prejudice):
Threats to survival (war, crime, drought or starvation, frequent flooding or hurricanes, or other natural disasters):
Other environmental problems (toxic air or water, crowded living conditions, stressful or depressing weather):
Other kinds of suffering:
5.6 When you look over the list, would you say that your overall level of suffering is:
Acceptable, easily tolerated,
Somewhere between “acceptable” and “tolerable”
Tolerable, meaning "not ideal, but acceptable",
Somewhere between “tolerable” and “barely tolerable”,
Barely tolerable, barely acceptable,
Not tolerable, but I have no choice but to accept it
5.7 What would other people say about your of your QOL or level of suffering? Would they wonder how you can stand it? Would they think you are doing OK or as well as anyone could expect? Would they think you were doing well compared to others like yourself? Would they think you were lucky and envy you? Would these opinions make a difference to you:
5.8 What would you say if you were looking over the responses of another person that were the same as yours:
A version of this next question will be asked at several points later on, as you consider other factors that affect your thoughts and feelings about leaving life:
5.9 Is your QOL or the degree of suffering that you are enduring now and that you expect to face in the future enough for you to consider leaving life:
5.10 Which of these additional factors could influence your ideas and feelings about leaving:
My assessment of my worth to the world,
How much other people (or animals) need or care about me,
Permission from others that it would be OK for me to leave when I want to or under certain circumstances,
Permission from society that it is OK to leave when I want or under certain circumstances,
The availability of a pain- and anxiety-free means to leave,
The availability of a way to make my leaving useful or financially rewarding,
The availability of a way that I can live on through some kind of tangible memorial,
The availability of more knowledge about what happens after life.
Other:
5.11 Let's say that you were in physical or psychological pain that was not going to get better. There is no hope of a cure. You have concluded that you could not adapt to the pain, and you could find no meaning in your suffering. You were not doing anyone any good by continuing to live. Would you consider leaving:
... if you could leave life painlessly and it was acceptable to your family and to society to do so;
... if the above were true and you were paid to do so;
... if the above were true and your leaving would be contribute to society, say, by participation in medical research;
... if you received help in dealing with unfinished business such as unresolved conflicts or other negative feelings between you and those you love.
...if the people around you agreed, however reluctantly, that your leaving would be the best thing,
5.12 What other conditions you can think of that would make you feel more comfortable about leaving:
5.13 What would you do if you invited into a UFO, with the assurance that you would have a life free from meaningless suffering? How much risk would you be willing to take? What evidence would you need before you decided to go:
5.14 Have you ever known a person that you believed would be better off permanently asleep? Have you ever wished that the life of a person who appeared to be suffering terribly would end:
5.15 Is there such a thing as complete hopelessness that is justified by the facts? Is it ever the case that there is nothing that anyone can do to make things better? Is there such a thing as "rational suicide":
5.16 Which of these groups do you think should be offered the means to leave life:
Terminally ill people,
Those with intractable physical pain,
Those with intractable psychological pain,
Prisoners,
Prisoners serving life sentences,
People who are starving,
Nursing home residents,
Handicapped or disfigured people,
Anyone who asks.
Anyone else?
5.17 Especially if you checked “Anyone who asks”: What safeguards do you think should be put in place:
We should make sure that the person is rational and not suffering from a mental disturbance.
We should make sure that the person is not being pressured to leave by greedy relatives or an unjust social system that restricts him to a low QOL.
We should make sure that the person goes through a process of decision-making with a professional who checks and challenges every step.
There should be a short waiting period (less than two weeks) to allow the person to change his mind.
There should be a longer waiting period to see whether the person could adapt to his situation.
Anyone who asks should be helped to leave. Everyone has the right to choose.
Anyone who asks should be helped to leave because it will save resources and help deal with the problems of overpopulation.
5.18 Which of the following do you think are good reasons for not offering people the opportunity to leave life voluntarily?
... because making this opportunity available would:
... lead to an increase in the number of people leaving that would continually remind us of our own mortality,
... force us to make uncomfortable and complicated decisions about when we or other people who are suffering should consider leaving life,
... deprive people of the opportunity to grow spiritually or to find meaning in their suffering,
... create the need for people who would help others to leave life, a class of professional murderers
... lead to abuses, such as trying to convince people whose care is inconvenient or expensive that their lives are no longer worth living.
Other reasons:
5.19 Having an escape route from an unpleasant situation can give a person the motivation to risk trying to make things better where he is because he knows he can leave if his attempts fail. Do you think that knowing that you could leave when you wanted to would help you endure a bit more suffering before you gave up: