- Where can you choose to end your life?
It seems counterintuitive that people have such different ways of viewing what gives someone the right to end their own life. Yes, it makes sense to be able to end your life if you are already dying from a painful terminal illness, and would like someone to assist you with the process. But what if you are going through something as minor as depression and don’t have interest in continuing your life? We should all have the right to choose when we want to die and how. The Netherlands has been helping people choose to end their own life since 2001, Belgium since 2002, and Luxembourg since 2009 with both euthanasia and assisted suicide. The states in the U.S. only allow assisted suicide for patients who are terminally ill. For example, Oregon, Washington, Montana, Vermont, and California. Most people don’t understand that we are all mortal and going to die anyway, we don’t need someone to give us the right to do such a thing.
http://theconversation.com/where-can-you-choose-to-end-your-life-56246
- Addiction as a disease
It seems counterintuitive that people don’t consider drug addiction to be an actual disease. Addiction is something that happens differently in each person. The way this happens is the same as when you satisfy your needs for food, water, or sex, your body gets the feeling of satisfaction or reward. When you take in chemicals it gives your body a version of that feeling, cause the brain to want it again. Over time it starts to change the brains systems with the feelings of reward, motivation, and memory; it may even start to be needed for the person to feel normal throughout the day. People also don’t understand that someone’s own will power isn’t always strong enough to get them to stop. Although there are people who can manage to stop on their own will power, it isn’t always the case for others. For about 25-50% of people with a substance abuse problem they have a very bad chronic disorder; these types of people are the ones who need therapy, rehab, and the helpful support of family and loved ones. Even though the early stages of addiction may be by choice, once the brain is changed by addiction it is believed that people truly lose control of their own behavior and actions.
https://www.centeronaddiction.org/what-addiction/addiction-disease
- Serious psychological disorders in college students
It seems counterintuitive that students go through so much stress and anxiety while at college. Despite the best efforts of the teaching staff and counselors trying to lower the stress and anxiety level of students, it still doesn’t stop them from contemplating suicide throughout the year. The rate of depression in college students seems to be increasing each year; and the rate of which some go on medicine seem to be increasing as well. Major depressive disorder, for example as explained in the DSM-IV, has various symptoms to look out for in students. For example, having a sad or depressed mood for most of the day, loss of interest in doing different daily activities, changes in the way you eat or a rapid loss or gain of weight, feeling as though you are worthless or not needed, and suicidal thoughts. A few or more of these symptoms must be shown or felt for a couple weeks to be able to give some sort of diagnosis. Even when a student comes forward for help, a lot of time they are asked to get treatment or asked to take a medical leave of absence until they are better. Even though this is the correct way to help someone in need they fear it may discourage others to come forward for help; because those individuals may feel embarrassed or won’t want to take time off of schooling to get better.
Rowan Counterintuitive 
This is generally strong work, Splash. Some notes.
1. You make a statement that suffers either from fuzzy thinking or fuzzy phrasing.
Of course, most people DO understand clearly that we’re all going to die. Your point, most likely, is that people don’t follow the logic of that premise: since we’re all mortal, we don’t need permission to die. But you can’t simply equate death with suicide. We might still be violating a social contract by hastening our own inevitable death. Leave a revised claim in a Reply below if you want a chance to improve this.
2. This will be the second time in two paragraphs that you’ve called out “most people” for their ignorance, Splash. You don’t mean to offend your readers, but you do set up a premise that most of them are wrong while you are enlightened. You don’t actually have to mention wrong people at all.
I’d also like to condense these two wordy sentences into one.
3. You say:
But of course it’s entirely intuitive that students suffer stress. I’m not sure what you find counterintuitive about this article, but it’s not that students are anxious.
Comments, please.
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