He's decided to die. Strangers are sending him prayers — and dinner invitations

Yahoo

14-04-2025

Editor's note: This article discusses suicide and suicidal ideation. If you or someone you know is struggling or in crisis, help is available. Call or text 988 or chat at 988lifeline.org.
Joseph Awuah-Darko has decided to die.
On Dec. 9, 2024 he broke the news to his Instagram followers.
'Hi,' he said in a video. 'I'm Joseph. I am bipolar, and I moved to the Netherlands to legally end my life. I'm not special, I'm just ready.'
Awuah-Darko, a 28-year-old British-Ghanaian artist, has documented his battle with treatment-resistant bipolar disorder for years. After contemplating assisted dying for five years, he is now pursuing the treatment under the public eye on grounds of mental suffering. In the Netherlands, assisted euthanasia for psychiatric conditions is legal, albeit with a lengthy approval process. His announcement has been met with mixed reactions — curiosity, horror, sympathy, prayers, confessions of shared struggles and even pleas to change his mind.
'What usually happens when you cry on the internet is that people bully you and create memes from your ugly crying,' he says from Amsterdam, over the phone in late March. 'To my shock and a bit of my bemusement, that didn't happen to me.'
Amid accusations of 'romanticizing suicide,' the most shocking response was not the criticism or praise — but a dinner invitation. Hundreds of strangers invited Awuah-Darko to share a meal, inspiring him to start a worldwide tour of dinners with strangers, which he has coined the "Last Supper Project." As he awaits a decision on his request for euthanasia, he's had 93 dinners and received over 4,000 invitations. He's traveled to Paris, Milan, Brussels and Berlin.
"Dinner is a very, if not the most, intimate and intentional part of anyone's day," he says. "For me, that has just been a special way of fostering remarkable relationships and connections during the time I have left."
One of his most impactful dinners was with a Surinamese mother who struggled with suicidal ideation and postpartum depression. She invited her kids to the table for a guided discussion over homemade Surinamese sourdough soup. At his 30th dinner, he met his friend Emmanual, who suffers from C-PTSD and has been scheduled to die on July 30.
Awuah-Darko, who has attempted suicide in the past, calls himself 'just one person among millions' struggling with bipolar disorder and chronic suicidality — but he understands the power of social media to amplify a story. 'If people choose to see it as romanticizing, I think that more reflects on them,' he says.
But under the watchful eyes of over 560,000 Instagram followers, Awuah-Darko undoubtedly has an impact. Whether that is 'good' or 'bad' is still debated, and bioethics and mental health experts say the answer may lie in the middle.
Assisted dying for psychiatric conditions is a complicated ethical dilemma with many 'right' answers, according to bioethicists. While it's imperative to spark open conversations around mental health and suicide, mental health experts caution that romanticization can ignite contagion suicide (also known as 'copycat suicides' or the 'Werther effect'). In contrast, the "Papegeno effect" is the effect that mass media can have by presenting positive examples of hope and non-suicide alternatives to crises.
'We know from studies that this can be a real risk, but also protective for some,' says Manuel Trachsel, a bio and medical ethics professor at the University of Basel in Switzerland who co-authored a 2022 study on assisted dying for severe and persistent mental illness.
As for the mixed reactions to Awuah-Darko — including those praying for him to change his mind — some people 'predominantly fear the Wether effect, and others see the chance of the Papageno effect,' Trachsel says.
Ken Duckworth, a triple board-certified psychiatrist and the Chief Medical Officer at the National Alliance for Mental Illness (NAMI), affirms that talking about suicide will not put the idea into people's heads. Instead, it can improve treatment-seeking behaviors. But social media, he says, gets complicated.
'I can't speak to how much he's suffering, and that is his decision. But making it such a public event does strike me as problematic,' says Duckworth. He worries that people considering suicide may fall susceptible to the contagion effect if they see Awuah-Darko as 'cool' or 'inspirational."
But Awuah-Darko doesn't think he's romanticizing suicide, nor does he want to. Rather, he wants to avoid people not talking about it at all. Still, he knows that bringing attention to assisted suicide doesn't come without criticism.
'My biggest curse, and I guess blessing sometimes, is my awareness of all this, and yet still choosing to do it,' he says. 'I think people should be able to talk about uncomfortable, inconvenient things without being accused of romanticizing it.'
Awuah-Darko is not interested in people who are "more interested in playing offense, politics and collective outrage" than having a nuanced conversation.
He continues, 'I think what people inadvertently say when they speak about their discomfort with seeing me talk about the dignity of medically assisted death is that they would rather I not talk about it, which means to continue this dangerously culpable culture of people ending their lives in private and in shame."
Trachsel says an autonomy-based ethical argument for assisted suicide for psychiatric conditions is that 'every person has the right to determine the time and circumstances of their death' and we should not 'discriminate' between those with psychiatric disorders and persons with somatic diseases.
However, for mood disorders, such as bipolar disorder, suicidal ideation can be a transient state, according to Duckworth.
'The mood states are inherently complicated. Helplessness and hopelessness are criteria of depression. Poor judgment and impulsivity are features of mania,' he says.
Awauh-Darko, who lives with chronic suicidality, struggles to navigate oscillations between manic productivity and deep lows, like many individuals with bipolar disorder, he says. He was diagnosed with bipolar disorder at age 16, but doesn't remember a time without its symptoms.
"You still essentially fear, or are almost terrified of joy, because you know that a deep depression beckons right around the corner," he says. "You do get fatigued of constantly trying to be okay."
But Lars Mehlum, a professor of psychiatry and suicidology, believes that chronic suicidality is still treatable and that doctors too often 'give up' on patients who are regarded as untreatable.
'People who are advocating for euthanasia look at it as some sort of linear process. It's not. It's very transactional and also volatile,' says Mehlum, who is also the founding director of the National Centre for Suicide Research and Prevention at the University of Oslo Institute of Clinical Medicine. He co-authored a 2020 study on assisted suicide for people with personality disorders. 'For example, people who are suicidal can very much be deeply suicidal in the moment. But in extreme cases, you can change suicidality within five minutes.'
Duckworth's research also illustrates that suicide is preventable — a rigorously studied belief shared by prominent mental health organizations like 988 Lifeline and the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, according to their mission statements.
When working on NAMI's book, 'You Are Not Alone: The NAMI Guide to Navigating Mental Health,' he interviewed 130 people, many of whom were suicidal in their 20s, but not in their 30s or 40s.
'The 20s are a difficult time in general, in life and in mental health conditions,' he explains. Finding companionship and joining peer support groups, along with the development of innovative treatments, were protective factors.
Mehlum says it can take 20 years for research evidence to reach clinical practice. New treatments are continuously studied. Prozac, one of the most commonly prescribed antidepressants, was developed in the 1970s, but didn't become widely available until 1988.
Duckworth argues that Awuah-Darko is pursuing one of his recommended treatments — regardless of intention — through the 'Last Supper Project' by building strong social connections.
In the United States and Awuah-Darko's home of London, assisted death for mental health suffering is illegal.
'I was very in the dark' PMDD can be deadly but many women go undiagnosed for decades
Awuah-Darko speaks with poise and intention, but he is self-aware of this juxtaposition. Some may see his apparent put-togetherness as contradictory to his suffering.
'While I may sound sanitized, composed and be able to structure sentences on this phone call, it doesn't mean that I'm not masking or that I'm not having to navigate complex emotions,' he says.
He also says he couldn't care less about being profiled in any capacity, at least not for personal fame. Rather, Awuah-Darko wants his story to reach people, whether through Instagram or this article, who feel alone in their battles, even if that comes with backlash.
'I have gotten messages and letters, thousands of which have spoken to how liberating people find my ability to speak so openly about what I'm going through,' he says. 'And that's worth it."
Society extends more grace in hindsight, he says. Instagram comment sections are flooded with hearts and flowers; the media memorializes a tragedy. 'But when someone chooses to confront it as a living person, there tends to be vitriol,' he says.
On average, 5% of people who apply for assisted death for psychiatric conditions in the Netherlands are approved. Between 2012 and 2021, only 3% of applicants younger than 24 died by assisted suicide on a mental health basis; 47% of applications were retracted and 45% were rejected. In 2024, 219 out of 9,958 euthanasia deaths were for psychiatric reasons, and the total deaths increased by 10% compared to 2023.
'I hope I get approved,' Awuah-Darko says.
However, when asked if he will change his mind, his honest answer is, "I don't know."
'Life has surprised me. I did not expect to be invited to dinner by thousands of people. That was not part of the plan," he says.
He's spoken to 73 people who have either been directly affected by assisted euthanasia or pursued it themselves and stopped the process.
'People have changed their minds before,' he says. 'I won't be the first in history to change my mind if I do.'
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: He's decided to die. His viral project is gaining attention – but is it problematic?