Despair as a Medical Response to Mental Illness
Assisted suicide in the Netherlands
The Atlantic recently ran a horrific but important article on the Dutch doctor Menno Oosterhoff who has gained notoriety for putting to death teenagers who are “mentally terminal.” In the Netherlands, this is legal. The article starts off, quite jarringly for me, with the story of an 18-year-old girl with severe OCD who requests that Oosterhoff take her life because she has had years of treatment and things are not getting better. For those of us who have been in the OCD world for any length of time, this story of treatment is not new. It’s common for someone to take a long time to find the right medication, right therapist, and right treatment for them. It’s also common to lose hope, to feel like things are never going to get better. But what’s absolutely horrifying in this story is that this young woman, with a still forming mind, in a emotionally vulnerable position, didn’t have a doctor who told her to keep fighting for her recovery. She had someone who confirmed for her that despair was the answer. And she lost her life because of it. All in the name of autonomy.
“Right to Die” battles are happening all over. Thankfully, one was just defeated in Scotland, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it comes up again. 12 US states plus DC and New York (starting in June) allow doctors to inject terminal patients with lethal drugs. Canada “is likely to start permitting psychiatric euthanasia in 2027.” How far behind will the US be? Once you accept that it is ethical to end suffering by actively ending life, the line between physical and mental suffering begins to break down. And in a society that prizes the individual’s sovereignty over everything (you are your own and belong to yourself!), the individual’s will to end life is a private choice that cannot be restrained by family, community, morality, or religion. So while this article is about the Dutch, we could be looking at our own future, unless we do something. As Charles Lane, the author of the article, states, “[T]he right metaphor for the risks of euthanasia is not a slippery slope but a runaway train.”
If that is the case, what can we do now? Obviously, we can oppose bills that allow for assisted suicide in our states. But what are the steps we can take to reframe the way we think about mental health? Because on the mental health side, before we even get to assisted suicide, there is a fundamental problem with despair as a medical response.
