On to the mentally ill! That is the message of a new article in the Dutch language tijdschrift voor psychiatrie 53 (2011) 8 (Journal of Psychiatry). I’ll skip the nonsense about great care being shown, and “hopeless” conditions–which the article doesn’t say is the same as untreatable, by the way, and skip right to the chase. From the Conclusion (English translation):
Assisted suicide, as a last resort in psychiatry, legally admissible since 2002, recently legitimized in practice. The midwife [of] Death is now appropriate for psychiatric reach patients, representing an emancipation of the psychiatric patient and psychiatry itself.
Emancipation! Both of the patient and the need for psychiatrists to try and save the lives of all suicidal patients!
And no psychiatrist had better refuse based on beliefs. Those refusing assisted suicide will have to explain themselves!
Categorical rejection of help-zelfdo thing in psychiatry represents a failure the autonomy of psychiatric patients and the scope of the legislation a duty to state reasons in the case of not honorring of requests for stervenshulp may lead [in the future] to the autonomy of the patient in more cases being honoured.
The name should be changed to “validated suicide,” once the imprimatur of a psychiatrist is put on the deed.
And so the last line of defense against the assisted suicides of mentally ill and other patients–a good mental health professional fighting for the life of despairing patients–slips away. Now, psychiatrists will help people make “rational” decisions to kill themselves in the Netherlands on an increasing scale.
It’s only logical. Once a society agrees that killing is an acceptable answer to human suffering, who is to gainsay the reasons someone might want to die? Culture of death Wesley? What culture of death?
January 17th, 2012 | 7:28 pm
[Expletive deleted].
We both have seen this coming, but you called it first.
I suppose I’d better contain my feelings of dismay and despair at this news – pretty soon I won’t be able to reach some arbitrary societal standard of ‘happy’ and I’ll be encouraged to off myself too.
January 19th, 2012 | 7:42 am
Seriously, does anybody think that some mentally ill people won’t kill themselves if assisted suicide isn’t available? Or that more of them will commit suicide if it is? Or that psychiatrists want to deprive themselves of future income by encouraging their clients to self-destruct? Everybody seems to be forgetting that the American assisted suicide model requires informed consent. IMO, fears of “creeping” active euthanasia” are overblown.
HW
January 19th, 2012 | 1:18 pm
As always, HistoryWriter, you disgust me. Suicidality is a very tragic, serious mental problem. As someone who lives with sometimes severe clinical depression, I would hope that if I ever fell down so far that I wanted to end it all, my psychiatrist and others around me would do everything they could to stop me, no matter what I said I wanted. To think that someone would say, “No, Safepres, don’t jump off a roof-Here, have some morphine instead!” makes me sick.
January 19th, 2012 | 3:50 pm
Seriously, does anybody think that some mentally ill people won’t kill themselves if assisted suicide isn’t available?
Congrats on missing the point.
And so spectacularly, too.
February 23rd, 2012 | 1:51 pm
I personally am a stranger to these blogs and haven’t read a lot of them. Recent events inspired me to see for myself in which way Americans see a subject like euthanisation. I am, of course, referring to the preposterous claims of American Presidential candidate Rick Santorum.
Conservative Americans will most likely despise the Netherlands for its humane euthanisation regulations, but I am personally só proud of it. I am not willing to attack you on your religious beliefs, but I believe that a person has the right to decide whether he/she will continue his/her life when experiencing pain of ANY kind.
Laws and regulations concerning euthanasia in the Netherlands are extremely strict and only possible with consent of the patient.
Oh, and by the way, dear writer of this blog: Using an article which you probably can’t even understand because it is in a foreign language is no problem. But running it through Google translator will not, in any way, correctly translate the article. Nor the language, nor its content. (Seriously, ‘stervenshulp’, is a Dutch word, not English)
Get your facts straight.
Wesley J. Smith Reply:
February 23rd, 2012 at 1:57 pm
Strict not, but that point aside, they are wholly unenforced. Show me where my facts are wrong?
Dutch doctors engage in infanticed, which is murder under Dutch law, but without fear of significant penalty. True or False?
The Lancet has twice demonstrated that 8% of all infants who die in the Netherlands are killed by doctors. True or False?
Dutch doctors “terminate without request or consent” hundreds of patients a year, technically murder Dutch law, without significant consequence. True or False?
Elderly people “tired of life” may soon be qualified for euthansaia, and a woman with macular degeneration was recently euthanized. True or False?
Mentally ill people can be euthanized. True or False?
Dutch doctors are allowed by the KNMG ethics rulings to teach non euthanasia qualified patients to commit suicide. True or False?
All true. That’s a leap off a moral cliff that has nothing to do with religion. Where are my facts wrong?
Harpuia Reply:
March 13th, 2012 at 9:34 pm
@Wesley J. Smith, What are your sources for this?
Wesley J. Smith Reply:
March 13th, 2012 at 10:07 pm
Some are in the comment. Otherwise search the blog and read my books. Also, do a Google search.
February 27th, 2012 | 1:40 pm
[...] interventions. But there was no indication whatsoever that treatment by a geriatric psychiatrist-who might also have killed her, now that I think of it–was even [...]
March 1st, 2012 | 6:22 am
Well, If you’d correctly quoted the report, you should have included this section too.
“Apart from the palliative measures that had already been taken, there were no alternative
ways to alleviate her suffering. The documents make clear that the physician and the
specialists gave her sufficient information about her situation and prognosis.” (page 19 of the Euthanasiecommissie Anual Report). Stop blabbering about stuff you don’t know anything about.
March 1st, 2012 | 8:04 am
[...] an article posted last month, Dutch psychiatrists hail their ability to euthanize patients as “emancipation.” [...]
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