Dutch Psychiatrists euthanizing patients
Dr Peter Saunders has some grim but unexpected stats on the rise of euthanasia deaths in the Netherlands.
Of specific interest to me was this:
13 psychiatric patients were euthanized, an increase of over 500% on the two reported in 2010.
I find this particularly disturbing as I believed a bedrock argument for euthanasia was grounded on the ‘free to choose’ premise. Can we say with confidence that psychiatric patients seeking euthanasia are capable of making free choices?
I asked Dr Peter Saunders on Twitter his thoughts on this and he responded:
@echurchblog In Netherlands u have 2b terminally ill, suffering unbearably and mentally competent – so it doesn’t fit but they do it anyway
— Peter Saunders (@drpetersaunders) September 26, 2012
Suicidal psychiatric patients as ‘mentally competent’ strikes me as a gross misnomer.
Alex Schadenbery commented yesterday:
Euthanasia for psychiatric patients in the Netherlands will likely increase substantially over the next few years in response to a Dutch article published last year in the Journal of Psychiatry advocating for the expansion of euthanasia for psychiatric patients.
And Wesley J. Smith over on First Things reported the following from the article in the Dutch language tijdschrift voor psychiatrie 53 (2011) 8 (Journal of Psychiatry):
Assisted suicide, as a last resort in psychiatry, legally admissible since 2002, recently legitimized in practice. The midwife [of] Death is now appropriate for psychiatric reach patients, representing an emancipation of the psychiatric patient and psychiatry itself.
Wesley went on to comment:
The name should be changed to “validated suicide,” once the imprimatur of a psychiatrist is put on the deed.
And so the last line of defense against the assisted suicides of mentally ill and other patients–a good mental health professional fighting for the life of despairing patients–slips away. Now, psychiatrists will help people make “rational” decisions to kill themselves in the Netherlands on an increasing scale.
I have been saved from my suicidal self on more than one occasion and I thank God for those interventions by outside agencies.
What if I had been given the choice to opt for the euthanasia route with the encouragement and support of my psychiatrist?
I think the answer is self-evident.
Tags: Law Moral Ethical, Mental Health
September 26th, 2012 at 5:08 pm
I don’t understand why anybody is surprised by this. It seems perfectly obvious to me that this was going to happen.
Once doctors are turned from life-savers to life-takers the barn door is open.
September 26th, 2012 at 5:59 pm
U.K. Ministers are ‘thinking the unthinkable’ euthanasia as the human contribution to the £10 billion of welfare cuts.
To stop the unthinkable sometimes you have to think the unthinkable.
September 28th, 2012 at 1:42 am
To my mind this does not provide a valid argument against assisted suicide, but I think what it does provide is an opportunity to learn, and to ensure that in the UK we draft laws tightly enough to prevent abuse. I think the key phrases ‘terminally ill’ and ‘suffering unbearably’ are just as important as ‘mentally competent’. So someone who is suffering from extreme mental ill health but does not fulfil the other two criteria is not in the same category.
October 4th, 2012 at 5:48 pm
Today, as I worked with a woman with end stage motor neurone disease – a woman of deep Catholic faith – she sobbed her heart out because of the pain, the immobility (she is completely paralysed and can only move her eyes and a few fingers on one hand – she is PEG fed) and the frustration of the disease. She said to me that all she wanted to do was die. I replied that death does not come for the asking and we talked about pain control and respite care at the local hospice and how we could improve communication.
‘Death does not come for the asking’ that is the rule in palliative care in Britain and I have worked in end of life care since 2003 and I have yet to hear any different – the message is the same from nurses, doctors, social workers and allied health professionals throughout the profession. It is those who sit on the side lines, clucking and moaning but doing little in any shape or form to care for the sick, the dying, those with illness and conditions that revolt the senses. Odd too, that here in London, there seems to be a surfeit of gay men and women who work in palliative care – conservative Christians seem rather thin on the ground… Odd that those who talk the talk so seldom walk the walk…
October 4th, 2012 at 9:54 pm
@fr. Richard,
“… conservative Christians seem rather thin on the ground… Odd that those who talk the talk so seldom walk the walk…”
No disrespect intended but how much of that maybe due to a left of centre closed shop of conscience in large parts of the public services and third sector?
Obviously there are exceptions.
October 9th, 2012 at 1:24 pm
@Goy
It would be interesting to hear of your experience of working in the public or third sector!
I had thought, after I wrote the above comment, that perhaps I was being a little too ‘London-Centric’ and that outside of London the make up of teams may be a little different. However on reflection I realised that because there is a disproportionate number of immigrant nurses working in London – many of whom also have a conservative religious faith – that it is odd that you don’t see more in palliative care – particularly as it is better paid than ward nurisng.
Whatever: ‘conservative Christians seem rather thin on the ground… Odd that those who talk the talk so seldom walk the walk…’
Is probably a little too simplistic and I withdraw it. Tho’ the comment ‘a left of centre closed shop of conscience in large parts of the public services and third sector’ is probably rooted in a similar ignorance and perhaps explains why there is so little real communication in the world when we all parrot our prejudices from our own little ivory towers.
Regards:
P.D.
October 9th, 2012 at 5:57 pm
@fr. Richard,
In both your comments the observation is your’s not mine – that conservative Christians seem rather thin on the ground and that there is a surfeit of gay men and women in palliative care.
I merely took your word for the disparity and my general experiences of interfacing with the public services and third sector to offer a superficial opinion of why that might be – a left of centre closed shop of conscience in large parts of the public services and third sector.