End of life decision-making and psychiatric illness

Clinical Center

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Abstract

This project involves both empirical and normative analyses, initially focusing on a specific subset of practices in some European settings. There are publicly available summaries of cases that some review committees deem particularly educational and therefore make accessible. One subset consists of most of those cases in which people have received assisted death for psychiatric illnesses. We have finished an analysis of 74 cases of persons with personality disorders or difficulties who received euthanasia or assisted suicide in the Netherlands. The manuscript is in preparation. We recently published a normative paper on the tension between suicide prevention efforts and psychiatric euthanasia, using a recently published statement by the American Association of Suicidology. Kim SYH, Conwell Y, Caine ED. Physician Aid-in-Dying for Psychiatric Disorders and Traditional Suicides: How Much Overlap? JAMA Psychiatry. Available Online Aug 8, 2018.