Published 11 November 2008, doi:10.1136/bmj.a2479
Cite this as: BMJ 2008;337:a2479

Letters

Depression and assisted dying

Euthanasia and depression: no surprise

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

Nobody should be surprised at the prevalence of depression and anxiety in Oregon patients requesting physician assisted suicide.1 This was the pattern of euthanasia’s expansion in Holland—a movement for relief of unbearable suffering in terminal cases became a means of termination for those whose problems were often more existential, or psychological, than physical.

In Holland the critical case in law and ethics was the Chabot case, in which a divorced woman with clinical depression after the death of a son asked for, and received, euthanasia.2 In another case, a request for euthanasia by a young woman with anorexia later was granted.

A retrospective study of deaths attributed to Dr Jack Kevorkian found none with end stage disease and several in whom necropsy revealed no clear organic dysfunction.3 Again, what was publicly proclaimed as an end to suffering became a matter of termination of people whose physical or psychological suffering was . . . [Full text of this article]

Tom Koch, professor1

1 University of British Columbia, Department of Geography (Medical), 1984 West Mall, Vancouver, BC, Canada V6T 1Z2

tomkoch@shaw.ca


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Prevalence of depression and anxiety in patients requesting physicians’ aid in dying: cross sectional survey
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