Physician-Assisted SuicideThere are thousands of people in the world who are sick and thousands of people who die every day. Why then would some of these people want to resort to medically assisted suicide? There are different forms of physician-assisted suicide, but they all end in suicide. The definition of physician-assisted suicide is: “the voluntary termination of life by the administration of a lethal substance with the direct or indirect assistance of a physician” (Medical Dictionary). This assisted suicide is usually done by a lethal injection or an overdose of pills to cause the patient to fall into a coma and die. Currently, the only US state that allows physician-assisted suicides is Oregon and even these must be considered as special cases not only by the physician, but by an entire team. Assisted suicides are morally wrong and there are other methods that can be used to relieve the pain of a terminally ill patient. Terminally ill patients are people who are told they have less than six months of survival left. When we say this, people usually get scared and because of the pain they feel, they fall into depression and would rather die than suffer. When a person learns they have a terminal illness, they go through a series of stages. The stages occur in this order: denial, anger, depression, bargaining and finally acceptance. The third stage is depression and this is where the patient usually wants to die because they feel like there is no hope and there is no reason to live (Keir 59) . If only people would help the patient through this period, they would eventually reach the stage of acceptance. Unfortunately, for some, they never reach this point because they have decided that suicide is a better way out of their illness. “USA Today reported that among older adults with terminal illnesses who attempt suicide, the number of people suffering from depression reaches nearly 90 percent” (Balch). This is an extremely high percentage. If people received counseling for their depression, the number of people who chose to commit suicide would decrease. Even though their terminal illness is not preventable, their depression is. A study of terminally ill patients concluded that patients who did not suffer from clinical depression had no suicidal thoughts or wished their death would come sooner..