# Euthanasia for non-terminally-ill patients **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [January 18, 2015, 5:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/euthanasia-for-non-terminally-ill-patients/710186 "2015-01-18T17:52:27Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![dofe](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/7ba0ec/32.png) [@dofe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dofe)\ **Post date:** [January 18, 2015, 5:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/euthanasia-for-non-terminally-ill-patients/710186/1 "2015-01-18T17:52:27Z")
In the US, only the states of Washington and Oregon have passed legislation allowing patients to undergo physician-assisted suicide, as long as they have been certified to suffer from terminal illnesses. [Belgium](http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/right-die-belgium-inside-worlds-liberal-euthanasia-laws-2/) goes one step further: it permits physician-assisted suicide even for patients with psychiatric conditions, such as depression, and even allows children to request euthanasia. I support the physician-assisted suicide laws in Oregon and Washington. One of my close relatives suffered from a painful terminal illness and ultimately decided to end his life by jumping out of a window. Sadly, he survived the initial fall and only died a few days later, in pain. While psychiatric conditions, particularly depression, can be just as debilitating as physical pain, is Belgium’s law too liberal in its scope? ---
**Author:** ![Smapti](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/smapti/32/17938_2.png) [@Smapti](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Smapti)\ **Post date:** [January 18, 2015, 6:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/euthanasia-for-non-terminally-ill-patients/710186/2 "2015-01-18T18:01:43Z")
Seems to me that helping people with depression kill themselves is the exact _opposite_ of what society should be doing. ---
**Author:** ![dofe](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/7ba0ec/32.png) [@dofe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dofe)\ **Post date:** [January 18, 2015, 6:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/euthanasia-for-non-terminally-ill-patients/710186/3 "2015-01-18T18:09:54Z")
> [@Smapti](#): > > Seems to me that helping people with depression kill themselves is the exact _opposite_ of what society should be doing. I agree. One of the patients featured in the video I linked above was euthanized because she experienced life-long depression. However, her son (who did not find out about the suicide until the hospital called him a day later) felt that his mother’s depression was largely caused by her estrangement from her children, and the doctor should therefore have urged her to reach out to her children first. ---
**Author:** ![clairobscur](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/839c29/32.png) [@clairobscur](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/clairobscur)\ **Post date:** [January 18, 2015, 9:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/euthanasia-for-non-terminally-ill-patients/710186/4 "2015-01-18T21:19:19Z")
> [@dofe](#): > > In the US, only the states of Washington and Oregon have passed legislation allowing patients to undergo physician-assisted suicide, as long as they have been certified to suffer from terminal illnesses. [Belgium](http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/right-die-belgium-inside-worlds-liberal-euthanasia-laws-2/) goes one step further: The Netherlands too. ---
**Author:** ![clairobscur](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/839c29/32.png) [@clairobscur](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/clairobscur)\ **Post date:** [January 18, 2015, 9:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/euthanasia-for-non-terminally-ill-patients/710186/5 "2015-01-18T21:22:35Z")
> [@Smapti](#): > > Seems to me that helping people with depression kill themselves is the exact _opposite_ of what society should be doing. When depression is curable, yes. But for people who have suffered through decades of depression without getting relief from drugs, why not? (the only example I read about, in the Netherlands, was such a case). ---
**Author:** ![Kobal2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kobal2/32/20_2.png) [@Kobal2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kobal2)\ **Post date:** [January 18, 2015, 9:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/euthanasia-for-non-terminally-ill-patients/710186/6 "2015-01-18T21:23:41Z")
> [@Smapti](#): > > Seems to me that helping people with depression kill themselves is the exact _opposite_ of what society should be doing. I should expect it’s not offered as a first option. However if no amount of shrinks, pills or Belgian beer have ever helped, what else do you propose ? ---
**Author:** ![iljitsch](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/77aa72/32.png) [@iljitsch](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iljitsch)\ **Post date:** [January 18, 2015, 9:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/euthanasia-for-non-terminally-ill-patients/710186/7 "2015-01-18T21:57:29Z")
Many people feel that in the Netherlands, things have progressed too far. A lot of doctors feel uncomfortable with the demands of patients. (Also it’s insane that checking whether the two doctors involved acted properly is done _after the fact_.) Maybe it’s harsh to say “no euthanasia for you” to people who are clearly suffering (from depression, OCD, psychosis), but I think that’s better than helping people to end their lives who could possibly be cured down the road. Psychiatry is not a hard science (even less so than physical medicine), so I’d say: stick to terminal, physical illness to be on the safe side. ---
**Author:** ![Smapti](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/smapti/32/17938_2.png) [@Smapti](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Smapti)\ **Post date:** [January 18, 2015, 10:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/euthanasia-for-non-terminally-ill-patients/710186/8 "2015-01-18T22:57:00Z")
> [@clairobscur](#): > > When depression is curable, yes. But for people who have suffered through decades of depression without getting relief from drugs, why not? (the only example I read about, in the Netherlands, was such a case). Because suicide doesn’t treat the depression. It’s the opposite of treating the depression. It’s fundamentally worse than _just doing nothing at all_ and letting the depression run its course, since depression is not a terminal illness and not all hopelessly depressed people will kill themselves. > [@Kobal2](#): > > I should expect it’s not offered as a first option. > However if no amount of shrinks, pills or Belgian beer have ever helped, what else do you propose ? Keep trying. ---
**Author:** ![clairobscur](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/839c29/32.png) [@clairobscur](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/clairobscur)\ **Post date:** [January 18, 2015, 11:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/euthanasia-for-non-terminally-ill-patients/710186/9 "2015-01-18T23:49:29Z")
> [@iljitsch](#): > > Maybe it’s harsh to say “no euthanasia for you” to people who are clearly suffering (from depression, OCD, psychosis), but I think that’s better than helping people to end their lives who could possibly be cured down the road. Psychiatry is not a hard science (even less so than physical medicine), so I’d say: stick to terminal, physical illness to be on the safe side. What do you call “safe side”? Safe side for whom? According to you, I should keep suffering for a couple decade more just in case someone would invent some miracle pill at some point in the future that would allow me to have some years of regular dull old age after a lifetime of suffering? (that’s hypothetical…I’ve no intent to end my life…not yet at least. But if someday I want to, I’d rather not have someone who would argue I shouldn’t have access to an easy, comfortable death “just to be on the safe side”). For the record, a friend of mine commited suicide as a result of mental illness (schizophrenia), and I understand perfectly his choice, having known him before and after the start of the illness. His life was a wreck. A very hypothetical medical miracle was certainly not worth keeping suffering. I’m very sorry for his mom, that I knew, but alternating between psychiatric hospital, depression, schizoprenic periods, being stunned by drugs, having traded a fit body for an obese one, a smart brain for a dulled one, an active life for a life on the dole in a crappy place, having no job, no love life, no perspectives, being ashamed of himself, living in delusions…Well, no…he shouldn’t have to go through some more decades of this “just to be on the safe side” (just so that perfect strangers who aren’t suffering feel _they_ are on the safe side, more exactly). (also, when you reserve it to _terminal_ illness, you deny any chance to people like this tetraplegegic who was begging to die and couldn’t until his mom did this awful deed for a mother herself before being tried for murder) ---
**Author:** ![clairobscur](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/839c29/32.png) [@clairobscur](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/clairobscur)\ **Post date:** [January 18, 2015, 11:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/euthanasia-for-non-terminally-ill-patients/710186/10 "2015-01-18T23:58:31Z")
> [@Smapti](#): > > Because suicide doesn’t treat the depression. It’s the opposite of treating the depression. It’s fundamentally worse than _just doing nothing at all_ and letting the depression run its course, since depression is not a terminal illness and not all hopelessly depressed people will kill themselves. > . Nobody arguing in favour of euthanasia is stating that it’s “treating” anything. It’s just putting an end to suffering. Life isn’t worth living when it acquires a permanent negative value, when adding a month of life is just making one’s life worst. The question of euthanasia begins precisely when the question of “treatment” ends. Anyway, you’re known to have an absurdly absolutist stance about suicide, and you probably would oppose euthanasia for someone who would be slowly roasted on coals for the next 20 years, so it’s not like I’m expecting another opinion for you. As it’s often stated, many people want to make _people_ go through pains they wouldn’t let a mere dog go through. I can’t understand that. ---
**Author:** ![Smapti](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/smapti/32/17938_2.png) [@Smapti](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Smapti)\ **Post date:** [January 19, 2015, 12:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/euthanasia-for-non-terminally-ill-patients/710186/11 "2015-01-19T00:10:53Z")
> [@clairobscur](#): > > Life isn’t worth living when it acquires a permanent negative value And I do not acknowledge that such a point exists, so I guess we’ll have to agree to disagree. ---
**Author:** ![Kobal2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kobal2/32/20_2.png) [@Kobal2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kobal2)\ **Post date:** [January 19, 2015, 12:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/euthanasia-for-non-terminally-ill-patients/710186/12 "2015-01-19T00:31:39Z")
> [@Smapti](#): > > Keep trying. Easy for you to say. I agree with every word \*\*clairobscur \*\*has written. ---
**Author:** ![Smapti](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/smapti/32/17938_2.png) [@Smapti](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Smapti)\ **Post date:** [January 19, 2015, 12:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/euthanasia-for-non-terminally-ill-patients/710186/13 "2015-01-19T00:39:58Z")
> [@Kobal2](#): > > Easy for you to say. Yes. It _is_ easy for me to say we should keep trying to find better ways to help people with depression, rather than simply letting them kill themselves because we can’t be bothered and it’s easier to let them “end their suffering”. Encouraging suicide solves nothing and makes noone’s lives better or easier. ---
**Author:** ![iljitsch](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/77aa72/32.png) [@iljitsch](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iljitsch)\ **Post date:** [January 19, 2015, 1:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/euthanasia-for-non-terminally-ill-patients/710186/14 "2015-01-19T01:05:32Z")
> [@clairobscur](#): > > What do you call “safe side”? Safe side for whom? According to you, I should keep suffering for a couple decade more just in case someone would invent some miracle pill at some point in the future that would allow me to have some years of regular dull old age after a lifetime of suffering? Obviously that’s not exactly the result I’m hoping for. But if it comes down to that, then yes. > [@clairobscur](#): > > For the record, a friend of mine commited suicide as a result of mental illness Yeah, me too. Not too sure about the nature of the mental illness, but he was in and out of mental hospitals for two years, and then there was the whole jumping from the 8th floor thing. > [@](#): > > and I understand perfectly his choice Not me. I think he was a dick for doing this to himself and the people who loved him. (Not to mention those who got to clean up the mess.) Also, this was very unexpected. Sure, to some degree that was obliviousness on my part, but I’m pretty sure not every second of his life was living hell. Should a doctor have helped him out and have given the street cleaners a break? Hell no. > [@](#): > > he shouldn’t have to go through some more decades of this “just to be on the safe side” (just so that perfect strangers who aren’t suffering feel _they_ are on the safe side, more exactly). The question isn’t whether we physically restrain people so they can’t commit suicide. The question is whether we have doctors help people out. If people are desperate enough to want to cut their life short by multiple decades, then having to take action themselves against the objections from insensitive assholes like me is the least of their worries. ---
**Author:** ![Kobal2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kobal2/32/20_2.png) [@Kobal2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kobal2)\ **Post date:** [January 19, 2015, 1:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/euthanasia-for-non-terminally-ill-patients/710186/15 "2015-01-19T01:17:07Z")
> [@iljitsch](#): > > If people are desperate enough to want to cut their life short by multiple decades, then having to take action themselves against the objections from insensitive assholes like me is the least of their worries. DIY is also a lot messier, exposes innocents and loved ones to horrible situations, it’s all too easy to “miss yourself” and thereby add a heap of shit to your already (subjectively) unbearable existence… But most importantly, if somebody’s desperate enough to want to cut their life short and they go to a doctor for help with the dying, they’re going to a doctor. Who’ll try and help them with the living first. ---
**Author:** ![aruvqan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aruvqan/32/2891_2.png) [@aruvqan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aruvqan)\ **Post date:** [January 19, 2015, 1:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/euthanasia-for-non-terminally-ill-patients/710186/16 "2015-01-19T01:19:47Z")
> [@dofe](#): > > In the US, only the states of Washington and Oregon have passed legislation allowing patients to undergo physician-assisted suicide, as long as they have been certified to suffer from terminal illnesses. [Belgium](http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/right-die-belgium-inside-worlds-liberal-euthanasia-laws-2/) goes one step further: it permits physician-assisted suicide even for patients with psychiatric conditions, such as depression, and even allows children to request euthanasia. > > I support the physician-assisted suicide laws in Oregon and Washington. One of my close relatives suffered from a painful terminal illness and ultimately decided to end his life by jumping out of a window. Sadly, he survived the initial fall and only died a few days later, in pain. > > While psychiatric conditions, particularly depression, can be just as debilitating as physical pain, is Belgium’s law too liberal in its scope? Well, on my mom’s side, I am possibly going to have Alzheimer’s, on my dad’s side Parkinsons doesn’t run, it gallops. I have determined that if I end up with the short stick of both, as soon as I start mentally degrading I am going to go where I can off myself. I am not going to be strapped into a chair, shaking hard enough I can no longer feed myself with no mind or self left. Neither condition is technically terminal or overly painful but it is entirely a quality of life and desire to not cost hundreds of thousands of dollars to maintain a brainless corpse that still technically is alive. ---
**Author:** ![Ambivalid](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/a5b964/32.png) [@Ambivalid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ambivalid)\ **Post date:** [January 19, 2015, 1:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/euthanasia-for-non-terminally-ill-patients/710186/17 "2015-01-19T01:25:08Z")
Who is the bigger dick? The person that would compel a permanently suffering person to continue to experience this unending suffering, in order to avoid experiencing any negative feelings of their own? Or the person who experiences this unending suffering, who chooses the only option available to end what truly is hell on earth for them? ---
**Author:** ![Smapti](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/smapti/32/17938_2.png) [@Smapti](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Smapti)\ **Post date:** [January 19, 2015, 2:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/euthanasia-for-non-terminally-ill-patients/710186/18 "2015-01-19T02:46:09Z")
> [@Ambivalid](#): > > Or the person who experiences this unending suffering, who chooses the only option available to end what truly is hell on earth for them? It’s hardly “unending” suffering if it eventually ends, now is it? ---
**Author:** ![iljitsch](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/77aa72/32.png) [@iljitsch](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iljitsch)\ **Post date:** [January 19, 2015, 7:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/euthanasia-for-non-terminally-ill-patients/710186/19 "2015-01-19T07:46:23Z")
I don’t think there is a possible policy here that doesn’t have any downsides. No euthanasia for non-terminally ill people means some people will have to suffer more and/or will try to end their lives themselves in suboptimal ways, euthanasia for non-terminally ill people means some people who could have lived a reasonable life will be helped to die. ---
**Author:** ![iljitsch](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/77aa72/32.png) [@iljitsch](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iljitsch)\ **Post date:** [January 19, 2015, 7:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/euthanasia-for-non-terminally-ill-patients/710186/20 "2015-01-19T07:56:06Z")
This morning on the website of a Dutch newspaper: [https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=nl&tl=en&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.volkskrant.nl%2Fbinnenland%2Flevenseindekliniek-weer-op-de-vingers-getikt~a3832423%2F](https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=nl&tl=en&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.volkskrant.nl%2Fbinnenland%2Flevenseindekliniek-weer-op-de-vingers-getikt~a3832423%2F) “The End-of-Life Clinic is reprimanded for the third time within a year, this time because of euthanasia at a 47-year-old woman with a severe form of tinnitus.” (The Google translation is pretty pathetic but you should get the drift.) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/euthanasia-for-non-terminally-ill-patients/710186.md?page=2)