March 25, 2025 - 1:30pm
Support for euthanasia in the Netherlands is consistently high. It was the first country in the world to legalise the practice with the “Termination of Life on Request and Assisted Suicide (Review Procedures) Act” in 2002. Criticism of the law from anti-assisted suicide campaigners are often seen as an attack on Dutch culture itself. But while the UK debates whether to legalise assisted suicide with Kim Leadbeater’s bill, a recent report shows a worrying expansion of the practice in the Netherlands to include psychological suffering and young people.
The report makes for startling reading. First, there are the numbers: almost 10,000 people were euthanised in 2024, a 10% rise from the previous year, and a significant number in a country of some 18 million people. Of more significant moral complexity, though, is the 60% rise in the number of those who were killed because of psychological suffering. In 2024, 219 cases were recorded, compared to just two cases as recently as in 2010. Of the 219, 30 were for patients aged 18-30. An unspecified number of minors were also euthanised.
Some of the cases detailed in the report make for hard reading. For example, an autistic boy between the ages of 16 and 18 asked for euthanasia on grounds of mental suffering, two years after he made an unsuccessful suicide attempt. The psychiatrists decided that his condition was untreatable, despite not having tried all available therapeutic models, and thought he might attempt suicide again if his application for euthanasia was not granted. A doctor also concluded that his wish to be euthanised did not stem from his autism but instead from the suffering caused by the consequences of autism, which some may consider a distinction without a difference. In any event, the request was approved, and the oversight committee praised the doctor for acting with caution and following protocol.
It is true that the boy’s autism would never have gone away, but at that young age one can hardly say with confidence that his ability to deal with it wouldn’t have improved. This is not to downplay his condition, but merely to state that it is impossible to know if someone’s misery is terminal, even if that is the most likely outcome.
In another case, an elderly woman who suffered from severe obsessive-compulsive disorder which manifested itself through a compulsive desire to clean was euthanised after suffering from a spinal fracture. Her injury meant she could no longer satisfy her cleaning urges. Her request was approved by doctors, who did not bother consulting a psychiatrist before making the decision. The case caused concern in the committee, which found that the doctor involved had breached the rules, declaring limply that “it expects a physician to exercise great caution when the euthanasia request arises from a mental disorder.”
Few have attempted to answer how increasing the availability of state-sanctioned euthanasia for psychological suffering can be squared with suicide prevention. Indeed, the former completely undermines the latter. Statistics show that legalisation of euthanasia does not reduce suicide rates. The figures show a modest increase in the suicide rate — excluding euthanasia — since euthanasia was introduced, and a rise in suicides among young people in the past decade.
The euthanasia committee’s chair expressed concerns about his body’s findings and called for debate about euthanasia for mental illness among young people. But it is unlikely that the law will be changed to exclude young people in mental distress. The previous Mark Rutte government also supported proposals to legalise euthanasia for sick children between the ages of one and 12 (it is already de facto legal for disabled newborns and permitted by legislation for children between the ages of 12 and 18).
The Netherlands provides a bleak example of the ways in which euthanasia can be expanded. Legislators in other countries, particularly in Britain, should take note.
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SubscribeOf course this should be no surprise whatsoever. It is merely the thick end of the wedge manifest after decades of destructive neoliberal progressive anti-family policies. The likes of the 1967 abortion bill, the taxation regime favouring two earners over the equivalent single earner, the undermining of marriage as the bedrock of society, dissembling education policies, withdrawal of family passports, promotion of pornography ( sex workers?)…..the list goes on…. all this slowly corroding support for decency and civility in the name of relativism, consumerism, reduction of people to economic actors. Sad, shameful and totally predictable. And the likes of DEI-ago two tier . the pillock, will see this as a “growth” opportunity.
“Withdrawal of family passports”? Do you contend that all members of a family should automatically go on holidays together?
Once upon a time in a country far away, it was quite usual for infants and young children to be added to a Mother’s (or Father’s) passport, it was understood that holding infants still for photos was impractical. In the not so distant past , and speaking from personal experience, the passport office practically banned the addition of children to a Father’s passport ; ‘does the Mother know you’re taking her children abroad?’
I am aware of how it used to be. I travelled to Australia on a family passport in 1967. Never understood the point of them though.
Wow, didn’t know the eugenicists have control of a society. Is this why the Dutch are so tall so fair so elvish? ASML
Nup. Squarish, fat people who eat herrings whole.
Eugenicists used to be people who said they were only doing what they did to create a healthier society. And before the fruits of their practice were realised plenty of respectable intelligent people believed them. But there is a new kid on the block who argues that they only do what they do because they are awake to injustice. Will we allow the same mistakes to be made?
Absolutely shocking. Liberalism taken to its logical extreme is sad and lonely. It makes no allowance for human frailty in elevating individual agency over everything else, finds ( and offers) no meaning in struggle and suffering. Tgis article is also a powerful argumnent to bring yourself ( and kids if you have them ) to a church near you. Our liberal societies are becoming more and more corporatised, atomised and lonely. We need to give ourselves and our kids more then deferral to crass simplistic liberalism
I thought you may be making a good point until you used the word “church”.
On the other hand if 2Tier was to volunteer
Shocking stuff.
Clearly the author has never suffered the anguish of intolerable mental distress.
He must have read the Guardian at least once
Even if he has, it would be no reason to kill him.
We continue to read article after article about why assisted dying is a really bad idea, but very little from those whose dearest wish (from experience) is to see it become legal in the UK.
We’ve heard all the “slippery slope” arguments many times, and those arguments are well-understood. The publication of the case is rarely heard by those seeking to bring relief in the end-stage of terminal illness – when even the best palliative care can no longer prevent immense suffering, such as when those very slowly drowning in their own fluids as their lungs fill up, millilitre by millilitre over many weeks, until their agonised gasping for breath 24/7 becomes unbearable even to their closest relatives. Indeed, the arguments of those who’d allow this inhumanity to continue drown out this reality.
You seem to be referring to the assisted suicide of those in terminal agony who are physically incapable of killing themselves and indeed I would hope in those circumstances a sensible doctor would ease my passing. This seems to be very different to widespread assisted suicide by those who are depressed or fed up for various psychological reasons and who are perfectly capable of killing themselves if they have sufficient will to do so. Suicide may no longer be a crime but establishing commercial enablers does seem a step too far and “problematic”.
So, you support giving those people the drugs to enable them to kill themselves?
I agree, LL. The arguments for assisted dying are rarely rehearsed, at least in the media to which I have access.
I accept that there will always be hard cases at the margins, and that protocols that discourage, prevent or punish the dispensation of terminal doses of drugs without due care for the underlying principles and potential overreaches should be emplaced.
But at bottom, the overriding principle seems to me that each of us owns their own life. Not the State, not God, not your family. It should be up to oneself to decide when to end it.
A humane society should not only permit this, but in cases where it is very difficult or even impossible to do this oneself, should facilitate the enaction of that choice.
Not sure why psychological suffering should be taken less seriously than physical suffering.
Killing someone because of it is a very precise definition of not taking it seriously.