Four-and-a-half years after he was diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder, a Dutch teen was euthanized at his request.
The boy, aged between 16 and 18, had described his life as “joyless.” He’d struggled with anxiety and mood-related problems, and where he fit in, in the world. Oversensitive to stimuli, “every day was an ordeal he had to get through,” according to the latest annual report from the Netherlands’ regional euthanasia death review committees. “In the final weeks before his death, he lay in bed the whole time.”
Despite his young age, his doctor had “no doubts whatsoever” that the youth had the mental capacity to appreciate what he was seeking, and that there was no prospect of improvement, according to the case report.
His death, part of a dramatic increase in psychiatric euthanasia in the Netherlands in recent years, should serve as a warning to Canada as a special parliamentary committee reconvenes to assess the country’s readiness to permit MAID on the sole basis of mental suffering, a prominent Canadian psychiatrist says.
The Dutch experience “should be taken as a wake-up call,” said Dr. Sonu Gaind, a professor of medicine at the University of Toronto and a past president of the Canadian Psychiatric Association.
“The threshold (for assisted death) in Canada is actually lower than the Netherlands,” Gaind said. “If MAID for sole mental illness is opened up in Canada, the numbers would significantly exceed what you see in the Netherlands.”
Proponents of MAID for mental suffering have long held the Netherlands out as a model — “no slippery slope there” — arguing that psychiatric euthanasia in Canada, like the Netherlands, would remain extremely rare.
However, the Dutch situation suggests a more appropriate metaphor for the risks of medically assisted suicide for mental illness “is not a slippery slope but a runaway train,” as Charles Lane reported last week in The Atlantic.
Hellbound and Down 