Should psychiatrists grant more patients’ euthanasia requests?
In 2002 the Netherlands adopted the Euthanasia Act, thereby legalising a 20-year-old convention of not prosecuting doctors who practise assisted suicide under certain criteria. The law applies to physically as well as mentally ill patients, on the condition that their suffering is “hopeless and unbearable” and no reasonable alternative exists.
But while euthanasia has become accepted for physically ill patients, it is still very much a taboo for psychiatric patients. Of the 2,331 cases reviewed by euthanasia review committees 2008 only two involved psychiatric patients.
“The suffering of psychiatric patients can be just as intolerable as many forms of physical suffering,” Eugène Sutorius, a professor of criminal law and a former president of the Right to Die-NL foundation, told a symposium this week. “But psychiatrists just don’t want to do it. They’re afraid of the paperwork, they’re afraid of being prosecuted and they’re afraid of death.”
What do you think? Should psychiatrists be more reticent than regular doctors in granting patients’ requests for assisted suicide? Or is it cruel to deny them that right, knowing they might try to kill themselves anyway?
Thursday 26 November 2009, 20:09
In old Japan and ancient Rome suicide was a most noble way to die. There is something very confident about taking fate into your own hands, instead of passively leaving it to God. If you command a servant (or a friend, or your physician) to kill you, it is basically suicide. Still heroic and very self aware.
But euthanizing someone against their will is murder. Psychiatric patients are (by definition) not compos mentis. Judgment and will are impaired. So it seems evident to me that you cannot euthanize mental patients ever! Keeping people on happy drugs and painkillers is controversial enough, but it is a lot better than depriving them of a possible future. And new drugs are developed all the time.
It is not very hard to kill yourself. Just jump off something high, or take an overdose of some opiate. There is a reason why any suicidal person is still alive. Often suicide seems the only way out of a problem, condition or situation, when there are many unseen (but hoped for) alternatives. When a mentally healthy person rejects those alternatives we should respect it. We might even encourage terminal patients to proudly choose their moment and not cling to life beyond hope of a future (yet at the cost of tremendous resources). When, however, someone is not dying but mentally unstable, let alone a psychiatric patient, others should not choose that moment for them.
Conscious suicide: OK
Murdering the weak: not OK.
Saturday 28 November 2009, 15:07
Euthanasia Act needs to be quashed. The life is a gift of God and no one of us have any right to legalize this Anti God rule,our country which is considered to be a Christian Country should not ignore the rules of the Almighty God.
I request the political leadership to remove this act a.s.a.p and find some other suitable solutions for those who ultimately being forced to choose this most unfortunate decision.
Its our moral obligation to stand on the side of those who are living in hopelessness. We have to reverse our living attitude from increasing Individualism to Collectivism. Let us feel once again that We Are One and its our moral,national responsibility to share the sufferings and pains of our fellow human beings!!
Tuesday 1 December 2009, 4:13
I am grateful to the Dutch legislator that the courage was brought up to pass such a law. I am obliged to the author of the article who presents a balanced, very humane view reinforcing beliefs in care, love and respect for people who are in an extreme difficult situation, patients and physicians. I hope that the Dutch solution will serve as a role model for other countries in Europe. The times should be over where the criminal law binds merciless the hands of both, physicians and patients. There remains enough suffering and pain in this world. We should modestly be aware that we will never get perfect solutions. Needed are ethically acceptable distributions of risks – and the Dutch law provides for that. It would be utterly unfair to burden the single physician with the whole risk.
Tuesday 1 December 2009, 9:11
Ahmed,
I think we really need to let go of personal religious views and the need to impose them on others.
I am a staunch Roman Catholic with my own strong but personal view on euthanasia. If I were to use the argument “The life is a gift of God and no one of us have any right to legalize this Anti God rule, our country which is considered to be a Christian Country should not ignore the rules of the Almighty God” I would also need to discredit all medical practices on the basis that they would also interfere with Gods plan. However I know of many Christians that receive Flu vaccinations, have operations, and receive chemo (myself included). To what extent would you say we interfere with Gods Plans? There are instances that occur on a daily basis (i.e. deforestation, environmental emissions) that could also be viewed in the same light; however we still go on to support big business that commits these acts. Going back to euthanasia… I really can’t tell you,,,, thankfully I have never been in a situation where I was in a vegetative state where I had to endure un imaginable pain, be lost in a coma, or be viewed by the outside world as being dead but in my own mind still very much alive. I do think the issue is something that should be discussed thoroughly with families in order to establish what the patient’s preferences are. Very interesting is to use Iran’s views on how sex change operations are justifiable in Islam making them among the highest to perform gender reassignment surgery. This will be a debate for many years to come and really each side with have very valid points.
Regards,
Marc
Tuesday 1 December 2009, 9:13
Apologies, my comment was for Khalid Ahmed Chaudry
Thursday 3 December 2009, 14:59
I just spoke to a nurse who has a son who from mere psychological stress suffers from paralysations which keep him bound to a wheelchair sometimes for a week. Former minister of Health in the Netherlands Els Borst says that her law on euthanasia, and if it applies to mental patients, came too early. Obviously we are living in a society too much based on competetion and commercialism to be in favour of the risk. The individual and the state have drifted too far apart and have been exchanged. Thus both have become a contradiction in terms, why nearly no one is sane. Els Borst also started the first prohibitions in Holland on smoking, smoking which in the New York Times I read takes away the ‘natural’ competition in people. You can easily see the connection. I don’t think competition is natural at all to anyone. It is taught. Illnesses are created, and none stand on their own. I also think here of ADHD which is treated with opiates, which is forbidden in some countries, and these (opiates) are generally forbidden in trade for adults. These medicines are enforced on thousands of children, in the Netherlands. See also Ritalin. In some countries these types of medicines were just given new names and have been made even more intense after popular resistance. Michel Foucault says that one of the myths of modern times is that the doctor is a very wise man. The swine flu virus beds in an undefined psychological fear, a self-denial. I am appalled at what I see on television, on the one hand a lot of sex, but without any point, there are sex courses for beginners live, on the other hand surgical operations are popular. It is disquieting that the state follows these exhibitional trends of inquiry into our most private parts, and implements them, and turns them into law. No soul has been found.
Sunday 24 January 2010, 0:15
I have never understood why severely pschiatrically ill patients do not have the right to have an euthanasia. I think they should have the right.