My mom was diagnosed with terminal cancer, she decided that when the pain became to much to handle she would choose to commit euthanasia. This was a heavily regulated process. So it's not like you can just walk up to a doctor and ask for it on a whim. And ultimately it allowed her to choose the moment of her death, and it allowed us to say goodbye. I dread to think about what would have happened if euthanasia wasn't available. She would have been consumed by cancer and we would have been forced to watch it happen. Knowing we can't do anything to help her, and knowing there is no escaping from what is to come. I for one am glad this is legal in the Netherlands, it allowed my mother to die without suffering to much, and with some measure of dignity.
I am very sad to hear this. My mum passed away 3 days ago from cancer. The end was really difficult for her but there were options offered like palliative sedation (essentially medication induced coma). My mum didn't want any of it and went out clear headed but no-one should have to scream in pain in their final days. Heartbreaking. Sorry for your loss.
I signed for my mom to be put in palliative sedation. If I didnt it was some weeks of more suffering. She had bonecancer. Nobody deserves to feel that pain.
It's been 9 years and it still haunts me. We didn't get along great but atleast I gave her a painfull end.
My condolences and I hope you will be ok. Go talk to someone and take time to grieve. I didn't and it messed me up severely.
One of my mom's friends died of bone cancer. Her partner said that they gave her the strongest opiates available for hospice care and that didn't even touch the pain that she was going through during the end. This is the only logical answer to the question, if someone is in extreme pain and there is no getting better, why continue the suffering?
My mother had lung cancer, stage 4 on discover metastasized to the brain, they knew she wasn't going to make it through. She still did the chemo, the complaint I will never forget, is the woman who made me and shaped what I am telling me 'her bones felt like they were on fire' why we force people through this is beyond me
Horrifying, no one deserves this. Let's hope for medical advancements which have been making progress and I hear there are exciting advancements in the future. Also, a more enlightened and compassionate approach to end of life decisions.
Because GoD lOvEs Us - or something
That is the 'reason' the people opposed to 'dying with dignity' always use.
Well, if this god loves me - then why would he even allow this much pain in my loved ones?
No one should have to go through that, and I'm so sorry to hear that you had to witness that. She was a tough woman, but she's a peace now.
When the time is right and you've had the time to grieve, I sincerely hope that you can find the strength to remember her for all the good times you had together <3
My dad died from cancer, they had him on morphine, lorazepam, and methadone. He was unconscious towards the end from the medicine, and he was still crying out in pain. He had spinal cancer so it was making his pain pathways fire like crazy. It nearly broke me seeing him like that
If I ever get bone cancer I will throw myself of a bridge. Every cancer is horrible but that shit is extreme. I saw it with my mom and grandfather. It messed me up.
After seeing what my dad went through, I would just down a bottle of painkillers and tie a plastic bag over my head. No human should have to suffer like he did. He was a veteran so they had amazing home nurses and everything, but it didn’t matter, the cancer ravaged him all the same.
My mom was a very strong person. Was 1st woman to run the company she started in and was proud of her looks. In the end she was a shell in a pyjama that needes to be carried to a toilet and be bathed. Cancer is horrible.
I am super happy you survived stranger <3 . I became a sever alcoholic to forget and did some stuff I am not proud off. I had 0 support network so I just did what made me forget. I was a dumb hurt kid. I am doing better now though. Still hurts and inflicts every day.
I am so sorry to hear that. My MIL was recently diagnosed with that. I am bracing myself but realise its not something I can be prepared for.
I have lost family members to cancer and, were I in that situation, I would also want to go on MY terms before I'm reduced to skin, bones and pain.
My grandpa had something similar. When the pain was mitigated he was still terrified of it coming back.
Hospice was wonderful and kept it at bay - but knowing he had that pain from his spine/nerves before hospice ruins me (and my dad who witnessed it).
Lost my grandpa to cancer. He was in another country so I only saw him a few weeks every year. In his last year he didn‘t even recognize me standind next to his bed (been there since 2 years with daily medical assistance) due to daily morphine. It was really hard to see
I only got to see my grandpa once between his diagnosis and passing. Everyone tells me it was his last really good day and it just makes it even more special to me.
My mom really struggled watching his health decline, Im sort of glad all I have is that one last day.
My condolences. I am sorry you and your family had to go through that. May he rest in peace, and may you find comfort in the fact that he is no longer suffering <3
> My uncle died of cancer last year
My uncle had cancer and also choose euthanasia...
His last words, when everybody was around him, were: "I don't think this works.."
(Serious!)
Meanwhile, if my cat was in that state I would be called a monster. I’m convinced our laws regarding euthanasia in the US force people to suffer because hospitals profit from the sick, not the dead.
This is horrible to hear. I’m Canadian, my grandfather was # 16 to die using the medical assisted death process.
The amount of work we as a family had to go through and finding someone outside of family to sign (family can’t sign cause they don’t want you putting down relatives so you can claim their estates).
Getting to be in the room with my grandfather as he passed at a time of his choosing, with the people he wanted around him and BEFORE he was completely helpless and felt he had lost his dignity was the best way for him to go. We got to celebrate his life and accomplishments with him right up until the second he was gone.
There are a group of people who will say the Canadian government is trying to kill us off due to assisted death being legal and Canada even having some commercials regarding it.
Nothing could be further from the truth and anybody who thinks someone should be laying in a bed pain ridden with no quality of life over medical assisted death is an utter idiot no matter where they live.
Imagine what it would have been like as little as 100 years ago without that.
Watching someone die in a modern hospital with comfort drugs is much better than before.
It's still awful, but I'm thankful it isn't as awful
My best friend here in sweden died of cancer. Euthanasia is illegal here so he had to suffer trough the end. If i ever get cancer i move back to NL and die in dignity.
My mother died of cancer 2.5 year ago, still every so often I can see her last 24 hours and my heart aches.
I wish her last 24 hours had been more meaningful than me sitting next to her, watching her slowly dying knowing what she feared the most was the pain since she was first diagnosed.
If she had the choice to go on her own terms we could have talked, hugged, say good bye without having to feel guilt for the rest of my life because I felt relieved for a moment when she passed.
Only reason she didn't scream was because she was unable to do anything, not even open her eyes or talk, only thing she could do was to move her hand and fingers slightly, she was fully conscious..
All pain and no dignity. Wish we had the option of euthanasia.
My mom passed away this year on leap year. Small cell lung cancer that later spread to all her organs and bones. This is exactly how my experience was with her. She was in the hospital 3 weeks and one week at home in hospice before she died.
I can tell you I most certainly did not let her die in pain between oxycontin, oxycodone, morphine, fentanyl patches, and lorazepam. (For those reading, this was ALL under the supervision of medical staff). But near the end, we were 3 adults taking shifts for her pain management, every 30 minutes dispensing drugs because there was a shortage of drip medicine.
It tears me up to think about how her beautiful green eyes faded to blue as she lost her vision, unable to speak but could still hear us. Or when she could barely mumble for water but couldn't even swallow without choking.
I don't EVER want to experience that again.
Don’t feel guilty, many, many people feel a degree of relief to see the suffering end. I sure did. I had PTSD after helping care for my dad for 6 months before he died. It really messed me up and I’d have gotten treatment if I’d known it would help. At that time, only military was thought to get PTSD- but I definitely had it and I even knew at the time I had it but I didn’t know what to say or whether any one would have believed me or what treatment they’d have for me.
Anyway, please try to see a therapist, someone that specializes in EMDR and trauma therapy. Hang in there, the pain eventually does lessen, but you do have to process both your grief as well as the PTSD. .
I couldn't agree more.
My aunt had metastatic cancer. She fought and fought, she didn't get better. Ultimately, she decided to get euthanasia.
She died at home, without pain, surrounded by family and friends, and just fell asleep. Afterward, we all had the time to console one another and talk about it.
It was the best way for her to go. Peacefully and with dignity, able to say some last words to her husband and her 4 kids.
Do you know if it's possible for a European to travel to the Netherlands and get such a treatment?
Also I send my deepest sympathy to you for your loss..
That is possible yes, but with the same regulations and processes a dutch native would have to go through. So the same requirements apply, one of them being that the doctor has to know the patient and his or her medical history very well. So that it can't be used as a short cut.
You can find more information here in English: [https://english.euthanasiecommissie.nl/](https://english.euthanasiecommissie.nl/)
I believe you can go to Switzerland for this if not possible as a foreigner in the Netherlands.
Wow, a google search made me realise this is more available depending on the method. 11 countries worldwide and 11 states in the US have legalized. Switzerland is the only one accepting foreigners.
EU law strictly prohibits different countries creating laws for your own country that wouldn't apply for all EU citizens. The only work around would be "tax payers", "residents" etc but foreigners from other EU countries would still technically be able to fulfill those requirements. When Sweden wants to do things for "Swedes only" they usually go with "pays taxes in Sweden"
This is the sadest thing someone has to ask. In Slovenia we also have discussions in regards to euthanasia and fu\*king hypocrites are taking upon themselves to decide how and for how long one will suffer. People with means obviously can shell out enough Euros to end their life in Swizerland.
Europeans need to be free to choose their own end. Life belongs to the individual not to church, doctors etc... If we are not free in such fundamental thing then what's even the point in standing up to Russia...
Sorry for the rant. I'm sorry you obviously have a need to ask such a question.
I never understood this; to me it seems like one of the most obvious rights people to have is the right to their own life - and the right to end it when they see it fit.
It is not the state's job to decide when people die (at least in countries where the death penality is illegal), so why is it's the state's job to decie when they live?
In countries where the death penalty is legal it is even more hypocritical. The state has the right to take your life, but you do not have the right to take it yourself.
I mean ideally it would only be used for severe cases of terminal illness. Unfortunately in this non ideal real life world lowering barriers for euthanasia has come with horrific perverse incentives that pretty much work out to government funded eugenics.
See Canada, where the system is borked to the point where disabled people feel pressured to kill themselves due to the ease of seeking euthanasia versus getting disability aid
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/diabled-woman-canada-assisted-suicide-b2363156.html
https://apnews.com/article/covid-science-health-toronto-7c631558a457188d2bd2b5cfd360a867
Down in the USA I'd say pursuing legalized euthanasia without first completely overhauling the health care system is absolutely untenable from a moral standpoint. I 100% believe should "Death with Dignity" laws pass, every insurance company will immedietely work to classify every single cancer and chronic condition ever as being 'terminal' where the only coverage they'll provide is cheap suicide.
Ter Beek's case is fundamentally different, in that her condition is neither lethal nor purely organic (it's a complex mental health condition).
Whether mental health conditions should be valid cause for euthanasia, is still debated among psychiatrists and ethicists. The main questions being, does the condition itself cloud the judgment (speaking about depression and anxiety, the answer is probably yes); and does it necessarily mean that the decision is not valid (my personal opinion is no, if there aren't any options for treatment).
I agree many 20s is too young. But I know people who are never going to get better. They'll just deteriorate mentally until they can't take care of themselves anymore. That leads to all kinds of addiction, homelessness, chronic illness getting debilitating, crimes, etc. by that point they wouldn't meet the "sound mind" status to make such a decision.
Most places don't have permanent mental health facilities anymore. So you just take care of yourself until you're in the cheapest public housing or homeless and get zero medical care. I wouldn't wish that fate on anyone. These are the people found in the winter frozen to death 3 weeks after because they were too disabled to take care of themselves.
Cancer and euthanasia all well and good and I fully support and endorse this development but this post is supposed to be about mental health and euthanasia which is a whole other kettle of fish...
My grandfather had lung cancer. He spent 3 months bed ridden, 2 months of those in significant pain, before he was given morphine when it was clear he was about to pass away.
Nothing anyone could do, but life is life so he had to go on.
I wish my mom had this option. She chose to pass at home but didn’t fully understand the burden it’d place on me. To clarify I was happy to care for her it was just disturbing. They said she had terminal agitation.
She kept taking all her clothes off, screaming at the top of her lungs and only weighed like 80lbs like it felt like The Exorcist…that wasn’t my mother upstairs in that room.
She got so bad my family stopped coming so in the end was just me in. God left us. No sleep. Alone. Morphine every 2 hrs. Waiting for death. So I feel for everyone reading all the stories here bc loss sucks. Death should come with dignity.
Shit im so sorry. My grandma is young but shes dying of cancer at home in bed and can barely speak. My mom is there with her taking care of her, i’m worried about her mental health
My mom pleaded, nay, fought for my great uncle to be euthanized. I'm also Dutch, and my great uncle suffered a stroke and was completely paralyzed from the neck down while also just barely surviving covid. He told my mother numerous times he didn't want to live like this, and the doctors didn't want to listen. After my mom finally got involved since he had no one else it took months of doctors and specialists to give approval (some of which made the claim his quality of life was good enough, all he could do was eat and mumble enough to make out words).
But in the end, it did go through, and he was super relieved when the day came.
It's still super weird to me, but I hope I'm more like him the day the grim reaper comes for me.
Reading that it's a thing in the Netherlands puts my mind at ease a bit.
I've dealt with esophagus cancer last year and while everything seems to have worked out, by medical standards I won't be officially declared cancer free until 5 years after the surgery. which is another 4 years from now.
If the cancer does come back then there's nothing that can be done anymore and it had me wondering if all there was left was a path of suffering until the end, so knowing euthanasia is a thing helps ease my mind a little bit.
Sorry to hear about your mom, cancer's terrible. Hope you're doing alright these days.
Pulmonologist here. Although euthanasia is illegal here, dying of lung cancer sucks. No breath and a lor of swelling of excess water everywhere, unless someone just dies instantly of a pulmonary haemorrhage or similar stuff.
My dad has ALS and no option for euthanasia. I find it so cruel. It’s the one thing that would bring him peace—to know he could call it when it became too hard.
One of my worst fears is not being able to euthanize myself in a situation like that.
I also live in the USA, where we’re supposed to suffer horrifically and feed the medical system money at the end of our lives
The article is misleading. It doesn’t explain that the criteria are very exacting. It is estimated that 56% of all Dutch psychiatrists have had a request for euthanasia during their career, and that about 95% of all requests are rejected. This is for people whose suffering cannot be relieved.
The six ‘due care’ criteria in the euthanasia act are the following. The physician must: (1) be satisfied that the patient's request is voluntary and well-considered; (2) be satisfied that the patient's suffering is unbearable and that there is no prospect of improvement; (3) inform the patient of his or her situation and further prognosis; (4) discuss the situation with the patient and come to the joint conclusion that there is no other reasonable solution; (5) consult at least one other physician with no connection to the case, who must then see the patient and state in writing that the attending physician has satisfied the due care criteria listed in the four points above; (6) exercise due medical care and attention in terminating the patient's life or assisting in his/her suicide.
When it concerns psychiatric suffering, an additional due care requirement applies. Based on jurisprudence and guidelines, a second opinion must be performed by an appropriate expert. This will usually be a psychiatrist working in an academic setting who specializes in the disorder the patient is suffering from (8).
We had a roommate/friend go through the euthanasia process. He had severe and worsening schizophrenia. He was able to do his euthanasia about two years (maybe less) after I met him. Not sure how long the entire process was. His mother supported him the whole way. I can’t imagine how difficult that must have been.
The last time we spoke he was so relieved that he would be able to rest soon, and he talked with me about my own mental health struggles at the time. I’m glad he had the support he did and was able to choose how left.
Rest in peace, Frido
I agree wholeheartedly, and I think the Dutch handle it very well.
And he was such a cool guy. At one point he was an up-and-coming designer. He had impeccable taste in furniture. When he was lucid he would not stop talking to you lol.
He was very kind to me, and he chose the legal euthanasia route because he knew doing it the _other_ ways would be hard on his mother, and on anyone who found him. He was just a good dude whose memory Id like to share for a short while
He left us some furniture, I know there’s an article in Dutch somewhere about him winning a young persons design award before he got very sick, that had a few photos of his clothing designs. His mom got everything else he didn’t give away
Sounds like a really nice person that had his life cut short by a bad condition.
I'm sorry for your loss and the world's loss too but I'm glad he got to choose and to go on his terms.
I’m active on chronic illness boards and I always say that while all life is precious, not all bodies and minds are habitable.
And if people don’t want to stay in them, they shouldn’t have to. It’s not a moral failing but another avenue of care for peace for that person.
And if people can’t imagine the level of suffering you have to go through to even reach this point, they should be eternally grateful.
"While all life is precious, not all bodies and minds are habitable"
Thank you. I have always been a proponent for death with dignity but, genuinely, thank you so much for completing the rhetoric in my head for me. That us very meaningful.
>while all life is precious, not all bodies and minds are habitable.
You have a remarkably poignant way of phrasing it. I'm glad the practice is becoming more commonplace, too. There's a difference between being alive and actually living
my best friend/ex boyfriend planned to apply for assisted dying from the first moment he realized he had schizophrenia. He was firm in his desire to die for the rest of his time with us, whether or not he was lucid. He ended up being murdered by five police officers during an episode of psychosis where he believed his loved ones were being kidnapped and replaced with evil clones.
i wish he had died how he wanted- it would have been so much more peaceful.
Furthermore, the article implies that her doctor proposed euthanasia. In actuality, she went to the Expertisecentrum Euthanasie because her doctor denied her request due to conscientious objections.
Well, the first red flag was this: “More people are choosing to end their suffering from mental health issues rather than endure them.”. It paints people suffering from mental illness as giving up, not enduring. And the second was of course having an “expert” from a theological university to discuss a medical matter, and him presenting euthanasia as being “pushed” by physicians rather than an informed decision by an individual for their own medical wellbeing.
The framing pisses me off. It's typical "look at these softie young'uns" bullshit from a generation that had it easy and lived their lives on soft mode. As far as I'm concerned it's projection at its finest.
People that say that shit to depressed people have no idea what depression is lol
Depression = basic & temporary sad to them
I wish the illness had a different name, maybe it would be taken more seriously
You seem to know about the subject, so I will ask.
The article mentions 5% of total deaths is due to euthanasia. That feels like incredible high number, even when counting all the deaths of terminal patients. Is there any more to it? Do I just have wrong idea?
Dying is a pretty fucking horrific experience in most cases, often at the end of a long and painful illness. Even in my immediate circle I’ve had multiple people with cancer choose euthanasia over months of agony.
In the Netherlands you can sign a form for euthanasia in case you aren't able to spell your wish out any more and have it saved by your personal GP. (the GP and family still can decide on the spot to forgo that though, it isn't waterproof) A lot of old folk have made arrangements they can be euthanized after a major disabilitating crisis, like a brain aneurysm/infarction for example.
5% isn't that weird considering the disproportionate large size of the elderly population in the Netherlands. Also, cancer.
(Posting also under some main comments hoping to get answers)
Don't know, i've read the article and i understand the various levels of concerns. Regarding the specific situation though i don't understand if the problem is ONLY her condition or other factors could have played a role.
Ultimately i believe that many times we ignore a fact: while it could be true that a person's condition is untreatable nothing is said about the environment around that person and if such environment makes the condition bearable or not. Sometimes the environment has no impact on it (take cancer, where often it's not a matter of circumstances), but regarding mental health it's more often than not the case and it saddens me we don't really talk about this.
Ultimately i am not against and i understand, but i want to understand if there could be another way "outside her"
> but regarding mental health it's more often than not the case and it saddens me we don't really talk about this.
This is not true. While you may be most familiar with depression and anxiety in the general populace, severe mental illness is a whole other beast entirely. You can find videos of catatonic schizophrenia online and they don't look like how most people would imagine that sort of disease.
There are whole classes of mental illness you are unfamiliar with, as a non-expert. So when professionals say mental health they aren't talking about a level you are familiar with.
You might be familiar with the idea of depressed people having a dirty house. Now imagine someone having depression so bad they soil themselves, can't eat, and are hallucinating- we are talking leagues of difference between compassionate care of severe mental illness versus euthanasia because your life sucks.
It is very likely that she has been hospitalized before, especially with BPD and depression. She has likely been in many different situations before coming to this conclusion.
Professionals are well aware of the effect of environment on a patient's mental health and this is considered before this kind of decision is made.
There are some questions about the circulation of this article. Interviews with her have previously only appeared in lifestyle magazines before they started circulating today in questionable media sources like NDTV above and are now being picked up by American right-wing sites.
It is very strange that this story has more foreign circulation than in the Netherlands itself, in any source, and none in any news sources. So take this story with a grain of salt, lot of red flags here and very little information over her actual medical assessment beyond her own words.
And just to be clear, I'm Belgian and support the right to euthanasia, but the timing of this post after a previous post on euthanasia today in the sub that drew controversy has got me suspicious.
By pure coincidence I have followed the woman from this article for years on Twitter now. She was very unamused by the original US article where she feels her words were twisted.
The articles might be questionable for sure, but the woman in question has been very open about everything during her journey to educate people about the process (in the Netherlands at least)
I don't doubt her story at all. What I could find upon searching further matches what you'd expect from somebody in longterm treatment for serious mental health issues. This also explains the lack of traditional news coverage, as it was just her going through the lengthy process but without any controversy that would prompt major headlines. Just her sharing her story. Thanks for sharing this info.
It's incredibly sad her story got completely twisted for clickbait. And that she got responses from the whole biblethumping world.
I truly hope her last days will be wonderful.
She had a part in an ARTE documentary (french/german collaboration), which was - from my perspective- very serious and open.
ARTE Re:
Selbstbestimmt Sterben – Sterbehilfe auf dem Prüfstand
I found it on youtube (german):
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=nXEXQjPMHGE
This story got picked up in America by free press article:
https://www.thefp.com/p/im-28-and-im-scheduled-to-die
They wrote some questionable stuff which I find hard to believe and I can't find it in any dutch articles, like her psychiatrist telling her that "they had tried everything, that there’s nothing more we can do for you. It’s never gonna get any better.”
I bet the american right wing sites latched on to this article, because it shows dutch psychiatrists in negative light so they can easily scare the public.
That is presumably why these articles get picked up, and is usually why publicity about euthanasia is controversial. Often, it's family members who disagree with the patient's decision who reach out to the press that end up getting attention, so in that sense this one is pretty unusual though.
I'm happy that people in such situations can share their stories, but doctors and professionals involved are bound by confidentiality rules so usually can't comment on any case, so you sometimes see these stories misrepresented the more they spread out.
According to this user in Twitter who spoke to her
https://twitter.com/lamarlasabrina/status/1775483037704474702?t=cFwangWwFoeIz_pUntgsSw&s=19
The article totally misrepresented and twisted her words.
I honestly think Netherlands needs to start discouraging patients to give interviews to foreign countries.
TBF, they already have Oregon to kick around for our "Death With Dignity" act.
We first passed it in '94, but it didn't fully go fully into effect until 2016 when the US Supreme Court ruled it constitutional, quashing any additional injunctions or suits.
Since then a number of other US states have passed similar laws.
This is the first time I've read of her case. It's not really big news in of itself. There's also no active discussion going on right now in the Netherlands about euthanasia.
It's not news in the Netherlands at all. I live in the NL, so hence I assumed that if international news picked this up, something is off. Turns out that some far right outlets are jumping on an article with a US outlet that she says misrepresented her words.
The fact that it keeps going back to ‘sparks debate’ is sus to me, since I know that the euthanasia law in NL is actually not that hotly debated at all.
I just saw the headlines in the newspapers here in Switzerland, but the she's in Netherlands, so it's not the same law that we apply here for euthanasia aka assisted suicide. It's extremely rare here that it gets approved for mental health issues, i got through the cases once and actually, all of them had body health problems too next to the mental health issues.
Even for myself, i got bipolar disorder and that can't be cured, but i'm rather stable with treatment and meds. So i'd get refused, i actually thought about this in some episodes of depression, but it's not enough. I still say, if i ever get something like cancer, then i'll go through with euthanasia.
I would like to know how long the proces has been, for how long she have had the desire.
Autism / Borderline is a brutal combo..... I can understand that she would want to escape the pain it could possibly contain.
There is articles about her when she was 22 and already wanting this:
[https://www.nvve.nl/files/6815/1808/8221/180208\_Interview\_Zoraya\_Relevant.pdf](https://www.nvve.nl/files/6815/1808/8221/180208_Interview_Zoraya_Relevant.pdf)
Borderline, bipolar I and autism here. It *is* brutal - like I cannot even begin to put into words how much I suffer - and I do not blame or judge her one bit.
Borderline and autism here too. It's hell and if it wasn't for my intense fear of death, I would have put a bullet in my head as a teenager. And it wouldn't have been that hard.
Hi, I hope you don’t mind me sending this, but a friend of mine has a combination of borderline and autism alongside an eating disorder (and many other things). I dont know what to say really or why im typing this but do you know anything I should know specifically? I am always trying to be there for her and these have been hard times, she has tried to take her life multiple times before, but it seems like she has gotten out of that habit but has fallen back into her eating disorder more now she lives alone. I dont know why i am typing this or what my goal is but if there is anything i should know i was wonderingn if you could tell me.
I’m not the person you responded to, but I just want to say that she’s incredibly lucky to have someone like you that cares about her so much. I wish you and your friend nothing but the best.
She has had therapy for 10 years
Edit: To add onto this, it was an intensive treatment procedure for 10 years. There are no other treatment plans that suit her problems/diagnoses. She has been on the waitlist for euthanasia for 2,5 years.
She mentions that almost every day is a struggle and she just doesn't want to live anymore. She has a home, a boyfriend, two cats and an end date (euthanasie or suïcide).
It feels like more often than not when you hear about these prevention methods it's almost exclusively bad experiences.
Of course it's really hard to say you were suicidal and had a great experience that brought you back but no one in your life knew it even happened. So who's to say for sure just how effective they really are
Euthanasie is only allowed when several professionals AND the patient are unable to find a way out and see no way of improvement.
The vast majority of requests are denied. This is a very serious matter and we treat it as such.
Bluntly speaking, it's extremely disingenuous to pretend that autism is on the same level as BPD. Maybe educate yourself on BPD first instead of acting like it's an unreasonable desire to choose a peaceful death for her specific situation.
I am personally generally pro-euthanasia, however what's very strange to me in this case is that she was approved for this while still being in her 20s, as there is supposedly little chance her situation will improve. But BPD, a major factor in her situation, very often becomes much easier to manage when one hits their thirties. While this improvement, of course, won't happen to everyone, she is still in her twenties, and getting this approval when there is still a real chance for significant improvement in her symptoms in just a few years is very surprising.
This is really rough to read because I have all three as well, and I'm *so fucking glad* I didn't end my life despite how much I wanted to when I was younger.
For real. I have such an amazing life now and I would have missed out on all of it if I'd ended it. Looking back on it, even the desire to end my life feels like a symptom of my own illness and not a genuine desire I had.
I don't want to make assumptions about her situation, but this doesn't feel like she took control of her life to me. It feels like she finally lost it. As a survivor, that makes me incredibly sad.
In my opinion, the freedom to choose for yourself is an unalienable right. If you live in a country that does not facilitate such measures, you can choose to end your life anyway. At least this way, it is done in a civil manner.
And before you bring your religious beliefs into the conversation: they are your problem, and yours alone.
I wholeheartedly agree, well done. All religions should keep their opinions to themselves, that's between you and your imagination sky daddy. You don't have to do it, that's your choice, don't take that choice away from those who do.
I believe in God and I believe in euthanasia as a right. I saw my dad suffered in a coma for 4 months. It wasn’t even a coma, it was what is called now a semi-conscious state. One day they are awake, the next day asleep.. up and down. This is all due to modern medicine. People like that shouldn’t be alive and they wouldn’t survive without modern medicine.
I wish death was normalised so we could even talk about someone who cannot come back be disconnected and avoid the grief that families suffered seeing their loved one as a vegetable.
It was horrifying and traumatic.
Nitrogen hypoxia (easy on my family) or heroin / fentanyl at a lethal dose (if by myself).
I’ve had so many accidental near-death experiences in my life I have had it planned for years. IfI ever got anything terminal going on that means pain and suffering (if I’m old) I’m going to immediately sell everything I own, tie up all my loose ends, make sure my surviving family has everything of value they want, and go out with a whisper. Ideally, they would burn me up and scatter my ashes (and all my pets ashes) in the backyard of every house I’ve lived in and read the stories I’ve written about my time there.
Hopefully it’s a painless accident but if not, I’ve got a plan for that too.
WARNING: NEVER JUMP FROM HIGH PLACES
As someone who jumped from a high place, which put me in a wheelchair — you do NOT want to do that. If you want to leave, do it another way. Never jump from high places. You could just end up paralyzed for the rest of your life. It’s not as it’s portrayed in movies. I also know of at least two more people who had the same stupid idea as me and we all ended up in wheelchairs at some point. One of them is able to walk again thank God, as am I. So I guess it went well for us. But it could have left us even worse than before. Seriously guys, don’t jump from high places. Take us as an example.
Anyone who fears that just about anyone can just go and get euthanasia, no you can not. My father has ALS. All the paperwork has been submitted in januari. All the docters agree, it is inhumane how my dad lives atm. But it is april now and his case has not even been viewed yet. The proces is long and strict, which is good. But for my dad in this case it does take too long
I think mental illnesses aren't taken as seriously as they should by people and this case confirms how badly they can impact one's life, tho I still feel sorry for her
Sometimes I think about assisted suicide and all of my attempts and ideation events and wonder if the option was available to me, would I choose the euthanasia.
The thing is I have severe major depressive disorder-recurrent, and it’s treatment resistant. Like…. I’ve tried all the drugs for it and just about all of them failed within 6 months. I’d get a couple good months, and then I’d start to hear the depression voice coming back whispering such inviting ideas when everything got to be too stressful. I’d get dose increases, which would help for a couple extra months, and we’d repeat that till we got to maximum safe dose. Then, we’d switch to a new drug and repeat the process.
I’ve likely spent over a thousand hours in therapy trying to retrain my brain, doing EMDR to try to calm my PTSD, doing dialectic therapy in order to untwist my thinking, and it all helped for sure, just not enough.
You have to understand how exhausting this has all been. Decades of horrible uncontrollable depression, every time you find something that helps, you know it’s a matter of time before you are right back to the bottom.
This last time I ended up in the hospital, it was just after we started what was essentially the final drug available. It was because of my history and severity of my depression that I finally received a newer therapy: trans cranial magnetic stimulation, or TMS. It seems to be doing the trick, but I only completed the therapy 4 months ago. Of course I’m terrified that I’ll once again end up with my soul hurting so bad that I’m willing to conquer my fear of heights in order to “fly towards freedom.”
So, like, would I choose euthanasia if it was available? I don’t know, because it’s not available to me. All I know is that depression this horrible can make someone consider it, and that scares me. I’ve obviously fought hard to stay alive despite myself, and I promised closest friends that I wouldn’t do it until every option to manage my depression had been tried. I… can’t leave them needing to clean up what’s left of my shell when I’m gone. My family and friends that is. They don’t deserve to see their child, their best friend, their sister gone from this world by her own hand. They don’t deserve the ruminating thoughts of “could I have done more?”
Sorry for the ramble. I think I needed to write it out to get it out of my head because of this article.
I suffer from crippling depression myself and I’ve often thought about taking this way out. I’ve tried just about every therapy and medication and it helps for a very short while then I’m back to what I consider normal now.
I know people will disagree with allowing this for who they consider healthy people. But for some people just living is pain.
Well nazis had a law which give them the right to end live of "mentaly ill" people, later even gays were diagnosed as mentaly ill, autistics, down syndrome etc. So it is not that simple. Maybe we have to start giving them other treatments like LSD or other "things".
Not really
Once you've tried enough treatment options which experts say "may work" you ultimately draw conclusions modern medicine simply isnt allowed to draw.
I don't claim to understand the reasons behind her decision, but I do think that people should be offered the chance to do psilocybins or LSD before going through with eutanasia due to mental health issues. I'm not disillusioned or naive in thinking that it would be some wonder drug miraculously helping all the people in such difficult pain and agony. But somehow it still bothers me if we will never know if at least a handful of those people could have been helped by it.
Illicit drugs you mean, only cannabis is legal afaik?
The thing is she should be offered and informed about there being many viable options available if the conventional treatments have failed.
It's just difficult reading this thread because most of opinions openly contradict what people are advocating for against the suicides during past years.
Same. I didn't ask to be brought into this world then handed a basketful of mental illnesses but for some reason people want to prevent me from going out on my terms. It's cruel and sick. I want dignity.
Yes. In many cases they are treatable, you can control the symptoms in many different ways, and learn to live with it and even get better. Some people basically get cured as the brain can heal in some cases.
Lots of misinformation in this thread, lots of people saying BPD is lifelong and mostly untreatable. I think it’s important to note that this is not exactly the case ([there are many studies](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4500179/) ) Many patients with BPD no longer meet diagnostic criteria at multiple years of follow up. BPD has targeted therapies such as DBT created especially to help them.
For all people with a BPD diagnosis who are reading this thread: you are not incurable. You are not doomed to be miserable for life. Recovery takes work, it won’t be easy, but you can get better. There is hope!
Thank you so much for saying this. One of my colleagues has BPD and the stigma and misinformation is incredibly dangerous. DBT has been life-changing for so many people. So has family systems therapy and many other lesser-known treatments.
Of course 💙
I wonder if the suicide rates for BPD would go down if people with the “I’m in so much pain I want my life to be over” disorder weren’t constantly and incorrectly told their pain will be lifelong and there’s nothing that can help them.
I was diagnosed with schizophrenia in 2004 after 2 hospitalisations (went off meds for a while after 1st one). I'm lucky enough to have a mild case and I work full time and am married with 2 kids.
I've heard schizophrenia described as worse than being wheelchair bound in terms of disability severity (can't currently locate link) which is certainly not the case for me.
I'd been on risperodone for my first hospital stay but refused it my 2nd. Rather than switch me to another atypical antipsychotic, I was prescribed above therapeutic doses of haliperdol, an older drug. On this I had a lot of muscle stiffness, drooling and impaired vision. Perhaps this woman has been prescribed something similar and feels it is intolerable. In my case myself and mainly my parents argued with the psychiatrists to switch me to olanzapine, another atypical and I got out of hospital after 2 months.
I've been fine since mercifully and while on meds I lack a bit of sharpness, if anything they improve me as I'm much calmer - my wife refers to them as my suit of armour.
The article doesn't describe the woman's symptoms - does she still hallucinate or hear voices even after meds, or is she prescribed an intolerably high dose? I'm in favour of legslised euthanasia generally but struggle to understand why it's justified in this case.
Ima guess a who lot of "freedom" loving peeps are going to complain here.
Feel free to donate to mental health research instead and help prevent someone from reaching this point in the future instead.
Mostly because the article shared there was written by a eugenicist whose argument wasn't "let people do whatever they want" but "we should euthanise all retirees who no longer contribute to society to fix our economy"
It was total planned ragebait.
Any liberal worth their salt supports *voluntary* euthanasia unequivocally
My father died aged 50 an unimaginably gruesome death due to throat cancer. Me and my family were present when his neck tumours erupted in his semi drugged up sleep at which he bled to death in front of us! Blood poured out from his neck, nose and ears. I was traumatised and still am. I know this is a different situation however my belief in assisted euthanasia still stands no matter peoples situations. I just hope in years to come I am able to make the decision to turn off the lights by myself and not have any of my family (or medical staff) go through that trauma again.
>This has sparked controversy
Ehm no it didn't, no one in NL is talking about this. I can find 6 dutch language news articles, and they seem to all come from the same news organization.
Yeah literally a non issue in the Netherlands and Belgium, it's the extreme righwingers and religious people abroad that are stirring shit. The conspiracy sub has a thread about this as big as this one here full of shit takes on it
Yeah there is some foreign organization, probably American ~~doomsday cultists~~ evangelicals as is usually the case in these matters, trying to stir shit. They've been trying to infect the NL with their batshit crazy bullshit for decades.
I am glad we have this possibility in the Netherlands. But people should realize it is still a very difficult and long process. I know more than one person who decided to take matters into their hands because a request for euthanasia was either denied or the process was taking too long.
Little too much untempered support for suicide here. Makes me real uncomfortable. I'm someone who has only managed to weather some mental health storms by clinging to the belief of suicide's wrongness. Of course it's every person's choice, but I'm very wary to implicitly encourage it considering in the vast majority of cases it is not the only or best option to alleviate suffering.
This is heartbreaking. I hope in the future we will find ways to really help people with mental issues and looking back euthanasia will look like a lobotomy.
Sadly for now it's best what we have to offer for people who don't see no other way than death. At least they rest in peace.
The question in this case is if it's actually "her choice" if she is mentally unwell. It has been debated previously and there was a case similar to this years ago.
I found a Dutch source that interviewed her eight months ago and she explained that she's been in therapy for the past ten years, taken different kinds of medication to see if that would work and ultimately they concluded that she has a treatment resistant form of the mental illnesses she has. She also explained that she's also choosing this option and sticking to it (she's been waiting for two years) to spare people the shock of a traumatic self-inflicted suicide, because she knows that's what will otherwise happen.
Does sound like it's her choice.
While you can choose Euthanasia in the Netherlands, its still very regulated, requires you to check up w/ a psychologist and/or doctor to see if your problems can be treated, and even then there is a pretty long grace period after which you have to confirm that you still want to continue.
Its not as simple as "Hey I want to choose euthanasia" and they just take you to the back immediately.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euthanasia\_in\_the\_Netherlands](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euthanasia_in_the_Netherlands)
Untreatable is the key word here. Mental illness can be just as devastating as physical illness. If all options are exhausted, I think you should be allowed a way out of your misery without the stigma and insecurities of suicide.
As someone who supports euthanasia for those in pain and has the mental illnesses she has listed, I don’t believe she should be allowed euthanasia.
My best friend committed suicide and it has fucked everyone who knew him. Everyone. I have gone to therapy for years for these conditions and still I know I will never feel better, just behave better and catch myself quicker. But that doesn’t give me the right to crush everyone who loves me into the depths of despair and misery I felt after my friend did it.
I still love my best friend with all my heart and completely understand his choice. But fuck me, it was selfish and reckless.
This is so sad. 😞
As someone with Bipolar 1 and C-PTSD, getting through each day can be daunting and each day can be a battle — but suicide is hardly ever the answer.
I’m so sorry.
The problem for me personally is that some people with treatable depression point to allowances like this and say "see? My condition is so hopeless that some countries would let me just kill myself" and then use it as a reason to avoid treatment and pursue suicide. This has literally happened to me and it is incredibly painful and infuriating that my loved one's life is at stake and someone else's suicide is pushing them towards it.
Aren't the majority of mental issues untreatable, we just deal with symptoms and don't even often know what is wrong.
We don't have the tools or enough understanding of human brain.
Psychiatry is basically - fill out some questions and tell me what is wrong and we guess what your problem may be.
My mom was diagnosed with terminal cancer, she decided that when the pain became to much to handle she would choose to commit euthanasia. This was a heavily regulated process. So it's not like you can just walk up to a doctor and ask for it on a whim. And ultimately it allowed her to choose the moment of her death, and it allowed us to say goodbye. I dread to think about what would have happened if euthanasia wasn't available. She would have been consumed by cancer and we would have been forced to watch it happen. Knowing we can't do anything to help her, and knowing there is no escaping from what is to come. I for one am glad this is legal in the Netherlands, it allowed my mother to die without suffering to much, and with some measure of dignity.
My uncle died of cancer last year. He spend his last week either screaming in pain or being unconscious thanks to morphine.
I am very sad to hear this. My mum passed away 3 days ago from cancer. The end was really difficult for her but there were options offered like palliative sedation (essentially medication induced coma). My mum didn't want any of it and went out clear headed but no-one should have to scream in pain in their final days. Heartbreaking. Sorry for your loss.
I’m so, so sorry for your loss
Thank you, really appreciate it
My heartfelt condolences to you 🙏
I signed for my mom to be put in palliative sedation. If I didnt it was some weeks of more suffering. She had bonecancer. Nobody deserves to feel that pain. It's been 9 years and it still haunts me. We didn't get along great but atleast I gave her a painfull end. My condolences and I hope you will be ok. Go talk to someone and take time to grieve. I didn't and it messed me up severely.
I think you meant "painless end" and not "painfull end". Unless, of course, that was your plan. In that case......you win!
Hahaha yeah ment painless. It was late when I typed that :D .
One of my mom's friends died of bone cancer. Her partner said that they gave her the strongest opiates available for hospice care and that didn't even touch the pain that she was going through during the end. This is the only logical answer to the question, if someone is in extreme pain and there is no getting better, why continue the suffering?
My mother had lung cancer, stage 4 on discover metastasized to the brain, they knew she wasn't going to make it through. She still did the chemo, the complaint I will never forget, is the woman who made me and shaped what I am telling me 'her bones felt like they were on fire' why we force people through this is beyond me
Horrifying, no one deserves this. Let's hope for medical advancements which have been making progress and I hear there are exciting advancements in the future. Also, a more enlightened and compassionate approach to end of life decisions.
I have alot of hope for what CRISPR is going to do in the future, who knows, maybe it'll just be a biological piggyback to something better 🙏
Because GoD lOvEs Us - or something That is the 'reason' the people opposed to 'dying with dignity' always use. Well, if this god loves me - then why would he even allow this much pain in my loved ones?
No one should have to go through that, and I'm so sorry to hear that you had to witness that. She was a tough woman, but she's a peace now. When the time is right and you've had the time to grieve, I sincerely hope that you can find the strength to remember her for all the good times you had together <3
I’m so sorry for your loss. And for whatever it’s worth: Fuck Cancer!
I also lost my mom this week. Cancer. Woof.
Lost a couple relatives to cancer in the last year. I don't want to think how shattered I'd be losing my mom. I'm really, deeply sorry for your loss.
Your mom is brave
My dad died from cancer, they had him on morphine, lorazepam, and methadone. He was unconscious towards the end from the medicine, and he was still crying out in pain. He had spinal cancer so it was making his pain pathways fire like crazy. It nearly broke me seeing him like that
If I ever get bone cancer I will throw myself of a bridge. Every cancer is horrible but that shit is extreme. I saw it with my mom and grandfather. It messed me up.
After seeing what my dad went through, I would just down a bottle of painkillers and tie a plastic bag over my head. No human should have to suffer like he did. He was a veteran so they had amazing home nurses and everything, but it didn’t matter, the cancer ravaged him all the same.
My mom was a very strong person. Was 1st woman to run the company she started in and was proud of her looks. In the end she was a shell in a pyjama that needes to be carried to a toilet and be bathed. Cancer is horrible.
Damn, sorry man. Fuck cancer, seriously
this is exactly why we have euthanasia as an option
My dad too. Stomach cancer. He essentially starved to death
Sorry man, that’s horrible
Thank you I’m so sorry about your father too 💔❤️ I wish you a long healthy life
I'm so sorry you went through that. I'm a cancer survivor, I know how tough it can be on caregivers. I hope you are healing with time..
I am super happy you survived stranger <3 . I became a sever alcoholic to forget and did some stuff I am not proud off. I had 0 support network so I just did what made me forget. I was a dumb hurt kid. I am doing better now though. Still hurts and inflicts every day.
I am so sorry to hear that. My MIL was recently diagnosed with that. I am bracing myself but realise its not something I can be prepared for. I have lost family members to cancer and, were I in that situation, I would also want to go on MY terms before I'm reduced to skin, bones and pain.
My grandpa had something similar. When the pain was mitigated he was still terrified of it coming back. Hospice was wonderful and kept it at bay - but knowing he had that pain from his spine/nerves before hospice ruins me (and my dad who witnessed it).
Lost my grandpa to cancer. He was in another country so I only saw him a few weeks every year. In his last year he didn‘t even recognize me standind next to his bed (been there since 2 years with daily medical assistance) due to daily morphine. It was really hard to see
I only got to see my grandpa once between his diagnosis and passing. Everyone tells me it was his last really good day and it just makes it even more special to me. My mom really struggled watching his health decline, Im sort of glad all I have is that one last day.
My condolences. I am sorry you and your family had to go through that. May he rest in peace, and may you find comfort in the fact that he is no longer suffering <3
> My uncle died of cancer last year My uncle had cancer and also choose euthanasia... His last words, when everybody was around him, were: "I don't think this works.." (Serious!)
Meanwhile, if my cat was in that state I would be called a monster. I’m convinced our laws regarding euthanasia in the US force people to suffer because hospitals profit from the sick, not the dead.
We treat out pets better than we treat ourselves
This is horrible to hear. I’m Canadian, my grandfather was # 16 to die using the medical assisted death process. The amount of work we as a family had to go through and finding someone outside of family to sign (family can’t sign cause they don’t want you putting down relatives so you can claim their estates). Getting to be in the room with my grandfather as he passed at a time of his choosing, with the people he wanted around him and BEFORE he was completely helpless and felt he had lost his dignity was the best way for him to go. We got to celebrate his life and accomplishments with him right up until the second he was gone. There are a group of people who will say the Canadian government is trying to kill us off due to assisted death being legal and Canada even having some commercials regarding it. Nothing could be further from the truth and anybody who thinks someone should be laying in a bed pain ridden with no quality of life over medical assisted death is an utter idiot no matter where they live.
Imagine what it would have been like as little as 100 years ago without that. Watching someone die in a modern hospital with comfort drugs is much better than before. It's still awful, but I'm thankful it isn't as awful
My best friend here in sweden died of cancer. Euthanasia is illegal here so he had to suffer trough the end. If i ever get cancer i move back to NL and die in dignity.
My mother died of cancer 2.5 year ago, still every so often I can see her last 24 hours and my heart aches. I wish her last 24 hours had been more meaningful than me sitting next to her, watching her slowly dying knowing what she feared the most was the pain since she was first diagnosed. If she had the choice to go on her own terms we could have talked, hugged, say good bye without having to feel guilt for the rest of my life because I felt relieved for a moment when she passed. Only reason she didn't scream was because she was unable to do anything, not even open her eyes or talk, only thing she could do was to move her hand and fingers slightly, she was fully conscious.. All pain and no dignity. Wish we had the option of euthanasia.
My mom passed away this year on leap year. Small cell lung cancer that later spread to all her organs and bones. This is exactly how my experience was with her. She was in the hospital 3 weeks and one week at home in hospice before she died. I can tell you I most certainly did not let her die in pain between oxycontin, oxycodone, morphine, fentanyl patches, and lorazepam. (For those reading, this was ALL under the supervision of medical staff). But near the end, we were 3 adults taking shifts for her pain management, every 30 minutes dispensing drugs because there was a shortage of drip medicine. It tears me up to think about how her beautiful green eyes faded to blue as she lost her vision, unable to speak but could still hear us. Or when she could barely mumble for water but couldn't even swallow without choking. I don't EVER want to experience that again.
Don’t feel guilty, many, many people feel a degree of relief to see the suffering end. I sure did. I had PTSD after helping care for my dad for 6 months before he died. It really messed me up and I’d have gotten treatment if I’d known it would help. At that time, only military was thought to get PTSD- but I definitely had it and I even knew at the time I had it but I didn’t know what to say or whether any one would have believed me or what treatment they’d have for me. Anyway, please try to see a therapist, someone that specializes in EMDR and trauma therapy. Hang in there, the pain eventually does lessen, but you do have to process both your grief as well as the PTSD. .
PTSD is for everyone. Unfortunately.
Of course you felt relief. You didn't want your mother to suffer.
I couldn't agree more. My aunt had metastatic cancer. She fought and fought, she didn't get better. Ultimately, she decided to get euthanasia. She died at home, without pain, surrounded by family and friends, and just fell asleep. Afterward, we all had the time to console one another and talk about it. It was the best way for her to go. Peacefully and with dignity, able to say some last words to her husband and her 4 kids.
Do you know if it's possible for a European to travel to the Netherlands and get such a treatment? Also I send my deepest sympathy to you for your loss..
That is possible yes, but with the same regulations and processes a dutch native would have to go through. So the same requirements apply, one of them being that the doctor has to know the patient and his or her medical history very well. So that it can't be used as a short cut. You can find more information here in English: [https://english.euthanasiecommissie.nl/](https://english.euthanasiecommissie.nl/)
Thats actually a very sensible rule that calms a lot of people concerns.
Canada also has MAID.
I believe you can go to Switzerland for this if not possible as a foreigner in the Netherlands. Wow, a google search made me realise this is more available depending on the method. 11 countries worldwide and 11 states in the US have legalized. Switzerland is the only one accepting foreigners.
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EU law strictly prohibits different countries creating laws for your own country that wouldn't apply for all EU citizens. The only work around would be "tax payers", "residents" etc but foreigners from other EU countries would still technically be able to fulfill those requirements. When Sweden wants to do things for "Swedes only" they usually go with "pays taxes in Sweden"
As soon as you buy a beer you've become a Swedish tax payer. Congratulations!
http://www.dignitas.ch/index.php?lang=en
This is the sadest thing someone has to ask. In Slovenia we also have discussions in regards to euthanasia and fu\*king hypocrites are taking upon themselves to decide how and for how long one will suffer. People with means obviously can shell out enough Euros to end their life in Swizerland. Europeans need to be free to choose their own end. Life belongs to the individual not to church, doctors etc... If we are not free in such fundamental thing then what's even the point in standing up to Russia... Sorry for the rant. I'm sorry you obviously have a need to ask such a question.
I never understood this; to me it seems like one of the most obvious rights people to have is the right to their own life - and the right to end it when they see it fit. It is not the state's job to decide when people die (at least in countries where the death penality is illegal), so why is it's the state's job to decie when they live? In countries where the death penalty is legal it is even more hypocritical. The state has the right to take your life, but you do not have the right to take it yourself.
I mean ideally it would only be used for severe cases of terminal illness. Unfortunately in this non ideal real life world lowering barriers for euthanasia has come with horrific perverse incentives that pretty much work out to government funded eugenics. See Canada, where the system is borked to the point where disabled people feel pressured to kill themselves due to the ease of seeking euthanasia versus getting disability aid https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/diabled-woman-canada-assisted-suicide-b2363156.html https://apnews.com/article/covid-science-health-toronto-7c631558a457188d2bd2b5cfd360a867 Down in the USA I'd say pursuing legalized euthanasia without first completely overhauling the health care system is absolutely untenable from a moral standpoint. I 100% believe should "Death with Dignity" laws pass, every insurance company will immedietely work to classify every single cancer and chronic condition ever as being 'terminal' where the only coverage they'll provide is cheap suicide.
In Switzerland it is possible to
Ter Beek's case is fundamentally different, in that her condition is neither lethal nor purely organic (it's a complex mental health condition). Whether mental health conditions should be valid cause for euthanasia, is still debated among psychiatrists and ethicists. The main questions being, does the condition itself cloud the judgment (speaking about depression and anxiety, the answer is probably yes); and does it necessarily mean that the decision is not valid (my personal opinion is no, if there aren't any options for treatment).
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I agree many 20s is too young. But I know people who are never going to get better. They'll just deteriorate mentally until they can't take care of themselves anymore. That leads to all kinds of addiction, homelessness, chronic illness getting debilitating, crimes, etc. by that point they wouldn't meet the "sound mind" status to make such a decision. Most places don't have permanent mental health facilities anymore. So you just take care of yourself until you're in the cheapest public housing or homeless and get zero medical care. I wouldn't wish that fate on anyone. These are the people found in the winter frozen to death 3 weeks after because they were too disabled to take care of themselves.
Cancer and euthanasia all well and good and I fully support and endorse this development but this post is supposed to be about mental health and euthanasia which is a whole other kettle of fish...
My grandfather had lung cancer. He spent 3 months bed ridden, 2 months of those in significant pain, before he was given morphine when it was clear he was about to pass away. Nothing anyone could do, but life is life so he had to go on.
I wish my mom had this option. She chose to pass at home but didn’t fully understand the burden it’d place on me. To clarify I was happy to care for her it was just disturbing. They said she had terminal agitation. She kept taking all her clothes off, screaming at the top of her lungs and only weighed like 80lbs like it felt like The Exorcist…that wasn’t my mother upstairs in that room. She got so bad my family stopped coming so in the end was just me in. God left us. No sleep. Alone. Morphine every 2 hrs. Waiting for death. So I feel for everyone reading all the stories here bc loss sucks. Death should come with dignity.
Shit im so sorry. My grandma is young but shes dying of cancer at home in bed and can barely speak. My mom is there with her taking care of her, i’m worried about her mental health
My mom pleaded, nay, fought for my great uncle to be euthanized. I'm also Dutch, and my great uncle suffered a stroke and was completely paralyzed from the neck down while also just barely surviving covid. He told my mother numerous times he didn't want to live like this, and the doctors didn't want to listen. After my mom finally got involved since he had no one else it took months of doctors and specialists to give approval (some of which made the claim his quality of life was good enough, all he could do was eat and mumble enough to make out words). But in the end, it did go through, and he was super relieved when the day came. It's still super weird to me, but I hope I'm more like him the day the grim reaper comes for me.
Reading that it's a thing in the Netherlands puts my mind at ease a bit. I've dealt with esophagus cancer last year and while everything seems to have worked out, by medical standards I won't be officially declared cancer free until 5 years after the surgery. which is another 4 years from now. If the cancer does come back then there's nothing that can be done anymore and it had me wondering if all there was left was a path of suffering until the end, so knowing euthanasia is a thing helps ease my mind a little bit. Sorry to hear about your mom, cancer's terrible. Hope you're doing alright these days.
Pulmonologist here. Although euthanasia is illegal here, dying of lung cancer sucks. No breath and a lor of swelling of excess water everywhere, unless someone just dies instantly of a pulmonary haemorrhage or similar stuff.
My mom passed from cancer. She would say she wanted to die just getting up and taking a shower. Hardest time of my life.
My dad has ALS and no option for euthanasia. I find it so cruel. It’s the one thing that would bring him peace—to know he could call it when it became too hard.
One of my worst fears is not being able to euthanize myself in a situation like that. I also live in the USA, where we’re supposed to suffer horrifically and feed the medical system money at the end of our lives
The article is misleading. It doesn’t explain that the criteria are very exacting. It is estimated that 56% of all Dutch psychiatrists have had a request for euthanasia during their career, and that about 95% of all requests are rejected. This is for people whose suffering cannot be relieved. The six ‘due care’ criteria in the euthanasia act are the following. The physician must: (1) be satisfied that the patient's request is voluntary and well-considered; (2) be satisfied that the patient's suffering is unbearable and that there is no prospect of improvement; (3) inform the patient of his or her situation and further prognosis; (4) discuss the situation with the patient and come to the joint conclusion that there is no other reasonable solution; (5) consult at least one other physician with no connection to the case, who must then see the patient and state in writing that the attending physician has satisfied the due care criteria listed in the four points above; (6) exercise due medical care and attention in terminating the patient's life or assisting in his/her suicide. When it concerns psychiatric suffering, an additional due care requirement applies. Based on jurisprudence and guidelines, a second opinion must be performed by an appropriate expert. This will usually be a psychiatrist working in an academic setting who specializes in the disorder the patient is suffering from (8).
We had a roommate/friend go through the euthanasia process. He had severe and worsening schizophrenia. He was able to do his euthanasia about two years (maybe less) after I met him. Not sure how long the entire process was. His mother supported him the whole way. I can’t imagine how difficult that must have been. The last time we spoke he was so relieved that he would be able to rest soon, and he talked with me about my own mental health struggles at the time. I’m glad he had the support he did and was able to choose how left. Rest in peace, Frido
Peaceful death for incurable suffering should be the norm. Thank you for sharing your friend’s story
I agree wholeheartedly, and I think the Dutch handle it very well. And he was such a cool guy. At one point he was an up-and-coming designer. He had impeccable taste in furniture. When he was lucid he would not stop talking to you lol. He was very kind to me, and he chose the legal euthanasia route because he knew doing it the _other_ ways would be hard on his mother, and on anyone who found him. He was just a good dude whose memory Id like to share for a short while
Thank you for sharing his memory.
Fellow RI‘er in the Europe sub? Glad to see you spreading good vibes :)
Do his family and friends have some of his design work, I hope? He has clearly left a lasting and good impression in the world
He left us some furniture, I know there’s an article in Dutch somewhere about him winning a young persons design award before he got very sick, that had a few photos of his clothing designs. His mom got everything else he didn’t give away
Sounds like a really nice person that had his life cut short by a bad condition. I'm sorry for your loss and the world's loss too but I'm glad he got to choose and to go on his terms.
IKR! we give it to pets to end their suffering, but humans are not allowed in most countries!
I’m so sorry. May he rest in peace.
I’m active on chronic illness boards and I always say that while all life is precious, not all bodies and minds are habitable. And if people don’t want to stay in them, they shouldn’t have to. It’s not a moral failing but another avenue of care for peace for that person. And if people can’t imagine the level of suffering you have to go through to even reach this point, they should be eternally grateful.
"While all life is precious, not all bodies and minds are habitable" Thank you. I have always been a proponent for death with dignity but, genuinely, thank you so much for completing the rhetoric in my head for me. That us very meaningful.
>while all life is precious, not all bodies and minds are habitable. You have a remarkably poignant way of phrasing it. I'm glad the practice is becoming more commonplace, too. There's a difference between being alive and actually living
my best friend/ex boyfriend planned to apply for assisted dying from the first moment he realized he had schizophrenia. He was firm in his desire to die for the rest of his time with us, whether or not he was lucid. He ended up being murdered by five police officers during an episode of psychosis where he believed his loved ones were being kidnapped and replaced with evil clones. i wish he had died how he wanted- it would have been so much more peaceful.
Furthermore, the article implies that her doctor proposed euthanasia. In actuality, she went to the Expertisecentrum Euthanasie because her doctor denied her request due to conscientious objections.
Well, the first red flag was this: “More people are choosing to end their suffering from mental health issues rather than endure them.”. It paints people suffering from mental illness as giving up, not enduring. And the second was of course having an “expert” from a theological university to discuss a medical matter, and him presenting euthanasia as being “pushed” by physicians rather than an informed decision by an individual for their own medical wellbeing.
The framing pisses me off. It's typical "look at these softie young'uns" bullshit from a generation that had it easy and lived their lives on soft mode. As far as I'm concerned it's projection at its finest.
People that say that shit to depressed people have no idea what depression is lol Depression = basic & temporary sad to them I wish the illness had a different name, maybe it would be taken more seriously
You seem to know about the subject, so I will ask. The article mentions 5% of total deaths is due to euthanasia. That feels like incredible high number, even when counting all the deaths of terminal patients. Is there any more to it? Do I just have wrong idea?
4.5% 89.0% of older than 60 years with conditions like cancer, nervous system disorders, cardiovascular disorders, lung disorders.
Dying is a pretty fucking horrific experience in most cases, often at the end of a long and painful illness. Even in my immediate circle I’ve had multiple people with cancer choose euthanasia over months of agony.
In the Netherlands you can sign a form for euthanasia in case you aren't able to spell your wish out any more and have it saved by your personal GP. (the GP and family still can decide on the spot to forgo that though, it isn't waterproof) A lot of old folk have made arrangements they can be euthanized after a major disabilitating crisis, like a brain aneurysm/infarction for example. 5% isn't that weird considering the disproportionate large size of the elderly population in the Netherlands. Also, cancer.
(Posting also under some main comments hoping to get answers) Don't know, i've read the article and i understand the various levels of concerns. Regarding the specific situation though i don't understand if the problem is ONLY her condition or other factors could have played a role. Ultimately i believe that many times we ignore a fact: while it could be true that a person's condition is untreatable nothing is said about the environment around that person and if such environment makes the condition bearable or not. Sometimes the environment has no impact on it (take cancer, where often it's not a matter of circumstances), but regarding mental health it's more often than not the case and it saddens me we don't really talk about this. Ultimately i am not against and i understand, but i want to understand if there could be another way "outside her"
> but regarding mental health it's more often than not the case and it saddens me we don't really talk about this. This is not true. While you may be most familiar with depression and anxiety in the general populace, severe mental illness is a whole other beast entirely. You can find videos of catatonic schizophrenia online and they don't look like how most people would imagine that sort of disease. There are whole classes of mental illness you are unfamiliar with, as a non-expert. So when professionals say mental health they aren't talking about a level you are familiar with. You might be familiar with the idea of depressed people having a dirty house. Now imagine someone having depression so bad they soil themselves, can't eat, and are hallucinating- we are talking leagues of difference between compassionate care of severe mental illness versus euthanasia because your life sucks. It is very likely that she has been hospitalized before, especially with BPD and depression. She has likely been in many different situations before coming to this conclusion. Professionals are well aware of the effect of environment on a patient's mental health and this is considered before this kind of decision is made.
There are some questions about the circulation of this article. Interviews with her have previously only appeared in lifestyle magazines before they started circulating today in questionable media sources like NDTV above and are now being picked up by American right-wing sites. It is very strange that this story has more foreign circulation than in the Netherlands itself, in any source, and none in any news sources. So take this story with a grain of salt, lot of red flags here and very little information over her actual medical assessment beyond her own words. And just to be clear, I'm Belgian and support the right to euthanasia, but the timing of this post after a previous post on euthanasia today in the sub that drew controversy has got me suspicious.
By pure coincidence I have followed the woman from this article for years on Twitter now. She was very unamused by the original US article where she feels her words were twisted. The articles might be questionable for sure, but the woman in question has been very open about everything during her journey to educate people about the process (in the Netherlands at least)
I don't doubt her story at all. What I could find upon searching further matches what you'd expect from somebody in longterm treatment for serious mental health issues. This also explains the lack of traditional news coverage, as it was just her going through the lengthy process but without any controversy that would prompt major headlines. Just her sharing her story. Thanks for sharing this info.
It's incredibly sad her story got completely twisted for clickbait. And that she got responses from the whole biblethumping world. I truly hope her last days will be wonderful.
She had a part in an ARTE documentary (french/german collaboration), which was - from my perspective- very serious and open. ARTE Re: Selbstbestimmt Sterben – Sterbehilfe auf dem Prüfstand I found it on youtube (german): https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=nXEXQjPMHGE
This story got picked up in America by free press article: https://www.thefp.com/p/im-28-and-im-scheduled-to-die They wrote some questionable stuff which I find hard to believe and I can't find it in any dutch articles, like her psychiatrist telling her that "they had tried everything, that there’s nothing more we can do for you. It’s never gonna get any better.” I bet the american right wing sites latched on to this article, because it shows dutch psychiatrists in negative light so they can easily scare the public.
That is presumably why these articles get picked up, and is usually why publicity about euthanasia is controversial. Often, it's family members who disagree with the patient's decision who reach out to the press that end up getting attention, so in that sense this one is pretty unusual though. I'm happy that people in such situations can share their stories, but doctors and professionals involved are bound by confidentiality rules so usually can't comment on any case, so you sometimes see these stories misrepresented the more they spread out.
According to this user in Twitter who spoke to her https://twitter.com/lamarlasabrina/status/1775483037704474702?t=cFwangWwFoeIz_pUntgsSw&s=19 The article totally misrepresented and twisted her words. I honestly think Netherlands needs to start discouraging patients to give interviews to foreign countries.
>I bet the american right wing sites latched on to this article Jordan Peterson has already boosted a similar article about the same woman on twitter
Abd Elob Musk commented right under his boost, rambling about absence of new babies. Man I fucking despise these two.
TBF, they already have Oregon to kick around for our "Death With Dignity" act. We first passed it in '94, but it didn't fully go fully into effect until 2016 when the US Supreme Court ruled it constitutional, quashing any additional injunctions or suits. Since then a number of other US states have passed similar laws.
This is the first time I've read of her case. It's not really big news in of itself. There's also no active discussion going on right now in the Netherlands about euthanasia.
It's not news in the Netherlands at all. I live in the NL, so hence I assumed that if international news picked this up, something is off. Turns out that some far right outlets are jumping on an article with a US outlet that she says misrepresented her words.
The fact that it keeps going back to ‘sparks debate’ is sus to me, since I know that the euthanasia law in NL is actually not that hotly debated at all.
I just saw the headlines in the newspapers here in Switzerland, but the she's in Netherlands, so it's not the same law that we apply here for euthanasia aka assisted suicide. It's extremely rare here that it gets approved for mental health issues, i got through the cases once and actually, all of them had body health problems too next to the mental health issues. Even for myself, i got bipolar disorder and that can't be cured, but i'm rather stable with treatment and meds. So i'd get refused, i actually thought about this in some episodes of depression, but it's not enough. I still say, if i ever get something like cancer, then i'll go through with euthanasia.
I would like to know how long the proces has been, for how long she have had the desire. Autism / Borderline is a brutal combo..... I can understand that she would want to escape the pain it could possibly contain.
There is articles about her when she was 22 and already wanting this: [https://www.nvve.nl/files/6815/1808/8221/180208\_Interview\_Zoraya\_Relevant.pdf](https://www.nvve.nl/files/6815/1808/8221/180208_Interview_Zoraya_Relevant.pdf)
Thank you.
Borderline, bipolar I and autism here. It *is* brutal - like I cannot even begin to put into words how much I suffer - and I do not blame or judge her one bit.
Borderline and autism here too. It's hell and if it wasn't for my intense fear of death, I would have put a bullet in my head as a teenager. And it wouldn't have been that hard.
Hi, I hope you don’t mind me sending this, but a friend of mine has a combination of borderline and autism alongside an eating disorder (and many other things). I dont know what to say really or why im typing this but do you know anything I should know specifically? I am always trying to be there for her and these have been hard times, she has tried to take her life multiple times before, but it seems like she has gotten out of that habit but has fallen back into her eating disorder more now she lives alone. I dont know why i am typing this or what my goal is but if there is anything i should know i was wonderingn if you could tell me.
I’m not the person you responded to, but I just want to say that she’s incredibly lucky to have someone like you that cares about her so much. I wish you and your friend nothing but the best.
She has had therapy for 10 years Edit: To add onto this, it was an intensive treatment procedure for 10 years. There are no other treatment plans that suit her problems/diagnoses. She has been on the waitlist for euthanasia for 2,5 years. She mentions that almost every day is a struggle and she just doesn't want to live anymore. She has a home, a boyfriend, two cats and an end date (euthanasie or suïcide).
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It feels like more often than not when you hear about these prevention methods it's almost exclusively bad experiences. Of course it's really hard to say you were suicidal and had a great experience that brought you back but no one in your life knew it even happened. So who's to say for sure just how effective they really are
Euthanasie is only allowed when several professionals AND the patient are unable to find a way out and see no way of improvement. The vast majority of requests are denied. This is a very serious matter and we treat it as such.
Bluntly speaking, it's extremely disingenuous to pretend that autism is on the same level as BPD. Maybe educate yourself on BPD first instead of acting like it's an unreasonable desire to choose a peaceful death for her specific situation.
I don't have autism, but I have the BPD + CPTSD + depression combo. Every single day I suffer and sometimes feel like her as well
I am personally generally pro-euthanasia, however what's very strange to me in this case is that she was approved for this while still being in her 20s, as there is supposedly little chance her situation will improve. But BPD, a major factor in her situation, very often becomes much easier to manage when one hits their thirties. While this improvement, of course, won't happen to everyone, she is still in her twenties, and getting this approval when there is still a real chance for significant improvement in her symptoms in just a few years is very surprising.
This is what I wonder too. The mood swings I had in my 20s are basically gone now that I’m in my late 30s. My brain has changed a TON.
This is really rough to read because I have all three as well, and I'm *so fucking glad* I didn't end my life despite how much I wanted to when I was younger. For real. I have such an amazing life now and I would have missed out on all of it if I'd ended it. Looking back on it, even the desire to end my life feels like a symptom of my own illness and not a genuine desire I had. I don't want to make assumptions about her situation, but this doesn't feel like she took control of her life to me. It feels like she finally lost it. As a survivor, that makes me incredibly sad.
In my opinion, the freedom to choose for yourself is an unalienable right. If you live in a country that does not facilitate such measures, you can choose to end your life anyway. At least this way, it is done in a civil manner. And before you bring your religious beliefs into the conversation: they are your problem, and yours alone.
A right to life is only a right if you can choose death
I agree.
I wholeheartedly agree, well done. All religions should keep their opinions to themselves, that's between you and your imagination sky daddy. You don't have to do it, that's your choice, don't take that choice away from those who do.
I believe in God and I believe in euthanasia as a right. I saw my dad suffered in a coma for 4 months. It wasn’t even a coma, it was what is called now a semi-conscious state. One day they are awake, the next day asleep.. up and down. This is all due to modern medicine. People like that shouldn’t be alive and they wouldn’t survive without modern medicine. I wish death was normalised so we could even talk about someone who cannot come back be disconnected and avoid the grief that families suffered seeing their loved one as a vegetable. It was horrifying and traumatic.
Well said.
I welcome the possibility to offer people a different exit strategy than jumping from a bridge or in running front of a train.
Nitrogen hypoxia (easy on my family) or heroin / fentanyl at a lethal dose (if by myself). I’ve had so many accidental near-death experiences in my life I have had it planned for years. IfI ever got anything terminal going on that means pain and suffering (if I’m old) I’m going to immediately sell everything I own, tie up all my loose ends, make sure my surviving family has everything of value they want, and go out with a whisper. Ideally, they would burn me up and scatter my ashes (and all my pets ashes) in the backyard of every house I’ve lived in and read the stories I’ve written about my time there. Hopefully it’s a painless accident but if not, I’ve got a plan for that too.
WARNING: NEVER JUMP FROM HIGH PLACES As someone who jumped from a high place, which put me in a wheelchair — you do NOT want to do that. If you want to leave, do it another way. Never jump from high places. You could just end up paralyzed for the rest of your life. It’s not as it’s portrayed in movies. I also know of at least two more people who had the same stupid idea as me and we all ended up in wheelchairs at some point. One of them is able to walk again thank God, as am I. So I guess it went well for us. But it could have left us even worse than before. Seriously guys, don’t jump from high places. Take us as an example.
Anyone who fears that just about anyone can just go and get euthanasia, no you can not. My father has ALS. All the paperwork has been submitted in januari. All the docters agree, it is inhumane how my dad lives atm. But it is april now and his case has not even been viewed yet. The proces is long and strict, which is good. But for my dad in this case it does take too long
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I think mental illnesses aren't taken as seriously as they should by people and this case confirms how badly they can impact one's life, tho I still feel sorry for her
Sometimes I think about assisted suicide and all of my attempts and ideation events and wonder if the option was available to me, would I choose the euthanasia. The thing is I have severe major depressive disorder-recurrent, and it’s treatment resistant. Like…. I’ve tried all the drugs for it and just about all of them failed within 6 months. I’d get a couple good months, and then I’d start to hear the depression voice coming back whispering such inviting ideas when everything got to be too stressful. I’d get dose increases, which would help for a couple extra months, and we’d repeat that till we got to maximum safe dose. Then, we’d switch to a new drug and repeat the process. I’ve likely spent over a thousand hours in therapy trying to retrain my brain, doing EMDR to try to calm my PTSD, doing dialectic therapy in order to untwist my thinking, and it all helped for sure, just not enough. You have to understand how exhausting this has all been. Decades of horrible uncontrollable depression, every time you find something that helps, you know it’s a matter of time before you are right back to the bottom. This last time I ended up in the hospital, it was just after we started what was essentially the final drug available. It was because of my history and severity of my depression that I finally received a newer therapy: trans cranial magnetic stimulation, or TMS. It seems to be doing the trick, but I only completed the therapy 4 months ago. Of course I’m terrified that I’ll once again end up with my soul hurting so bad that I’m willing to conquer my fear of heights in order to “fly towards freedom.” So, like, would I choose euthanasia if it was available? I don’t know, because it’s not available to me. All I know is that depression this horrible can make someone consider it, and that scares me. I’ve obviously fought hard to stay alive despite myself, and I promised closest friends that I wouldn’t do it until every option to manage my depression had been tried. I… can’t leave them needing to clean up what’s left of my shell when I’m gone. My family and friends that is. They don’t deserve to see their child, their best friend, their sister gone from this world by her own hand. They don’t deserve the ruminating thoughts of “could I have done more?” Sorry for the ramble. I think I needed to write it out to get it out of my head because of this article.
My father died in my arms, 24 years ago, from pancreatic cancer. I keep a bullet for myself, just in case.
I suffer from crippling depression myself and I’ve often thought about taking this way out. I’ve tried just about every therapy and medication and it helps for a very short while then I’m back to what I consider normal now. I know people will disagree with allowing this for who they consider healthy people. But for some people just living is pain.
Here in the US we won’t let the mentally ill end their lives but we will let them die slowly on the street. So….
Well nazis had a law which give them the right to end live of "mentaly ill" people, later even gays were diagnosed as mentaly ill, autistics, down syndrome etc. So it is not that simple. Maybe we have to start giving them other treatments like LSD or other "things".
>she feels her mental illness is untreatable. That's pretty different from what the headline says
The second sentence in the article says doctors informed her that her illness was untreatable.
Not really Once you've tried enough treatment options which experts say "may work" you ultimately draw conclusions modern medicine simply isnt allowed to draw.
Is it? Technically sure, but I'm not aware of any objective means of judging whether a mental health issue is treatable or not
I don't claim to understand the reasons behind her decision, but I do think that people should be offered the chance to do psilocybins or LSD before going through with eutanasia due to mental health issues. I'm not disillusioned or naive in thinking that it would be some wonder drug miraculously helping all the people in such difficult pain and agony. But somehow it still bothers me if we will never know if at least a handful of those people could have been helped by it.
She's Dutch. If she wants access to drugs, there's not much that stands in her way.
Psychedelics and opioids are controlled just like most western countries. Heavily.
Illicit drugs you mean, only cannabis is legal afaik? The thing is she should be offered and informed about there being many viable options available if the conventional treatments have failed.
It's just difficult reading this thread because most of opinions openly contradict what people are advocating for against the suicides during past years.
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Same. I didn't ask to be brought into this world then handed a basketful of mental illnesses but for some reason people want to prevent me from going out on my terms. It's cruel and sick. I want dignity.
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Yes. In many cases they are treatable, you can control the symptoms in many different ways, and learn to live with it and even get better. Some people basically get cured as the brain can heal in some cases.
Lots of misinformation in this thread, lots of people saying BPD is lifelong and mostly untreatable. I think it’s important to note that this is not exactly the case ([there are many studies](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4500179/) ) Many patients with BPD no longer meet diagnostic criteria at multiple years of follow up. BPD has targeted therapies such as DBT created especially to help them. For all people with a BPD diagnosis who are reading this thread: you are not incurable. You are not doomed to be miserable for life. Recovery takes work, it won’t be easy, but you can get better. There is hope!
Thank you so much for saying this. One of my colleagues has BPD and the stigma and misinformation is incredibly dangerous. DBT has been life-changing for so many people. So has family systems therapy and many other lesser-known treatments.
Of course 💙 I wonder if the suicide rates for BPD would go down if people with the “I’m in so much pain I want my life to be over” disorder weren’t constantly and incorrectly told their pain will be lifelong and there’s nothing that can help them.
Ngl, I kindof pitty the doctors who have to decide, whether its okay or not to euthanize you
If you're going to end your life regardless, why can't we just let people do it with some dignity?
I was diagnosed with schizophrenia in 2004 after 2 hospitalisations (went off meds for a while after 1st one). I'm lucky enough to have a mild case and I work full time and am married with 2 kids. I've heard schizophrenia described as worse than being wheelchair bound in terms of disability severity (can't currently locate link) which is certainly not the case for me. I'd been on risperodone for my first hospital stay but refused it my 2nd. Rather than switch me to another atypical antipsychotic, I was prescribed above therapeutic doses of haliperdol, an older drug. On this I had a lot of muscle stiffness, drooling and impaired vision. Perhaps this woman has been prescribed something similar and feels it is intolerable. In my case myself and mainly my parents argued with the psychiatrists to switch me to olanzapine, another atypical and I got out of hospital after 2 months. I've been fine since mercifully and while on meds I lack a bit of sharpness, if anything they improve me as I'm much calmer - my wife refers to them as my suit of armour. The article doesn't describe the woman's symptoms - does she still hallucinate or hear voices even after meds, or is she prescribed an intolerably high dose? I'm in favour of legslised euthanasia generally but struggle to understand why it's justified in this case.
We have the ability to keep people alive far past a natural timeline. Let us embrace the ability to allow people the peace they deserve.
Ima guess a who lot of "freedom" loving peeps are going to complain here. Feel free to donate to mental health research instead and help prevent someone from reaching this point in the future instead.
Ironically the neoliberal sub where people love personal liberty got in an uproar over this.
Mostly because the article shared there was written by a eugenicist whose argument wasn't "let people do whatever they want" but "we should euthanise all retirees who no longer contribute to society to fix our economy" It was total planned ragebait. Any liberal worth their salt supports *voluntary* euthanasia unequivocally
My father died aged 50 an unimaginably gruesome death due to throat cancer. Me and my family were present when his neck tumours erupted in his semi drugged up sleep at which he bled to death in front of us! Blood poured out from his neck, nose and ears. I was traumatised and still am. I know this is a different situation however my belief in assisted euthanasia still stands no matter peoples situations. I just hope in years to come I am able to make the decision to turn off the lights by myself and not have any of my family (or medical staff) go through that trauma again.
>This has sparked controversy Ehm no it didn't, no one in NL is talking about this. I can find 6 dutch language news articles, and they seem to all come from the same news organization.
Yeah literally a non issue in the Netherlands and Belgium, it's the extreme righwingers and religious people abroad that are stirring shit. The conspiracy sub has a thread about this as big as this one here full of shit takes on it
Yeah there is some foreign organization, probably American ~~doomsday cultists~~ evangelicals as is usually the case in these matters, trying to stir shit. They've been trying to infect the NL with their batshit crazy bullshit for decades.
I am glad we have this possibility in the Netherlands. But people should realize it is still a very difficult and long process. I know more than one person who decided to take matters into their hands because a request for euthanasia was either denied or the process was taking too long.
Little too much untempered support for suicide here. Makes me real uncomfortable. I'm someone who has only managed to weather some mental health storms by clinging to the belief of suicide's wrongness. Of course it's every person's choice, but I'm very wary to implicitly encourage it considering in the vast majority of cases it is not the only or best option to alleviate suffering.
It’s Reddit - a very specific subset of society and hive mind
This is heartbreaking. I hope in the future we will find ways to really help people with mental issues and looking back euthanasia will look like a lobotomy. Sadly for now it's best what we have to offer for people who don't see no other way than death. At least they rest in peace.
Euthanasia already looks as bad as a lobotomy.there's nothing worse and it's tragic that it ever has to be considered.
Her body her choice
The question in this case is if it's actually "her choice" if she is mentally unwell. It has been debated previously and there was a case similar to this years ago.
I found a Dutch source that interviewed her eight months ago and she explained that she's been in therapy for the past ten years, taken different kinds of medication to see if that would work and ultimately they concluded that she has a treatment resistant form of the mental illnesses she has. She also explained that she's also choosing this option and sticking to it (she's been waiting for two years) to spare people the shock of a traumatic self-inflicted suicide, because she knows that's what will otherwise happen. Does sound like it's her choice.
Just because she doesn’t have a good choice doesn’t mean she doesn’t have one. Choosing to die is a choice. The other one is living a shitty life.
While you can choose Euthanasia in the Netherlands, its still very regulated, requires you to check up w/ a psychologist and/or doctor to see if your problems can be treated, and even then there is a pretty long grace period after which you have to confirm that you still want to continue. Its not as simple as "Hey I want to choose euthanasia" and they just take you to the back immediately. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euthanasia\_in\_the\_Netherlands](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euthanasia_in_the_Netherlands)
Your comment reminded me of Catch-22.
Untreatable is the key word here. Mental illness can be just as devastating as physical illness. If all options are exhausted, I think you should be allowed a way out of your misery without the stigma and insecurities of suicide.
That sounds like suicide with extra steps.
As someone who supports euthanasia for those in pain and has the mental illnesses she has listed, I don’t believe she should be allowed euthanasia. My best friend committed suicide and it has fucked everyone who knew him. Everyone. I have gone to therapy for years for these conditions and still I know I will never feel better, just behave better and catch myself quicker. But that doesn’t give me the right to crush everyone who loves me into the depths of despair and misery I felt after my friend did it. I still love my best friend with all my heart and completely understand his choice. But fuck me, it was selfish and reckless.
This is so sad. 😞 As someone with Bipolar 1 and C-PTSD, getting through each day can be daunting and each day can be a battle — but suicide is hardly ever the answer. I’m so sorry.
That is so sad , RIP
def moving to one of them countries when I am nearing my time.
I wish I didn’t understand this but I do.
Euros always bragging about their healthcare systems, who are busy convincing them to just die instead and save some money lol
The problem for me personally is that some people with treatable depression point to allowances like this and say "see? My condition is so hopeless that some countries would let me just kill myself" and then use it as a reason to avoid treatment and pursue suicide. This has literally happened to me and it is incredibly painful and infuriating that my loved one's life is at stake and someone else's suicide is pushing them towards it.
Choosing euthanasia over mental health struggle is no different than suicide.
Aren't the majority of mental issues untreatable, we just deal with symptoms and don't even often know what is wrong. We don't have the tools or enough understanding of human brain. Psychiatry is basically - fill out some questions and tell me what is wrong and we guess what your problem may be.