Trigger Warning, On Some Heavy Stuff, On When Ill Teenagers Ask to Be Put to Death

There was this article in the Atlantic, about this dutch doctor who provides euthanasia for psychiatric clients. He talks about how for his first one, he asked god if it was ethical.

The article is, When Mentally Ill Teenagers Ask to Be Put to Death, by Charles Lane.

The doctor contended with his god, about what was ethical or not, and the piece goes into that question. Two things stood out to me about the piece.

An interesting statistic from the article (and this is commonly known as a statistic) is that women attempt suicide a lot more than men do, and men succeed a lot more than women do.

And so being able to go to a doctor’s office for euthanasia significantly increases the odds that a girl or woman succeeds.

Of the 30 people who died in this manner in 2024, 25 of them were women.

This stood out to me. It is structurally important in that if women are allowed to make attempts in a setting that is more controlled and designed to work, that the attempts do lead in the result desired in the moment.

The second thing that stood out to me, is if a person comes into a medical office with this desire, but they are calm enough, and are allowing a professional to take control of the situation…

I do think there ought to be other options. I don’t think that a “rejection” or a “confirmation” of the ask should be the choice that is going on there. The person coming in is trusting for something to be happening. The doctor should not be projecting the extreme duality of the choice back to the person coming in.

In an office, the calm setting, is the place where potential options can be discussed. I really was moved by this thought.

In an emergency room context, if a person comes in or a person’s friend takes a person to an emergency room, the motivation there is to do whatever is possible to keep the person alive. Sometimes there is a violation of autonomy, in the case of being administered medication you might not want to be taking, or involuntary hospitalization.

There are people who are afraid of going to the hospital or getting help at all, because of experiences like this.

However, if somebody is calm, and seemingly in control of their emotions, and goes into a clean office and says that they want to die, should the prioritization tilt in the opposite direction of respecting autonomy? This experiment is not common, of euthanasia being given not for medical pain. It is not legal in most countries. However if it is an experiment, it should be treated as an experiment and more options for life and for treatment should be offered basically starting immediately, even if we do not know if it would help. Maybe we will learn about what helps.

I do believe that if you are in a state of extremity, that an office where you talk about it is a place where options should be given to you.

There is a lot of research being done on this topic in a variety of contexts. Some of the research likely can be put into a context like that.

Who might have wanted to live if given other options in that office? I don’t think that’s the point — they already were given other options and asked about them. Probably not many — or at least not many that would have said so, immediately, that day, that week, that month.

But in terms of being the people who are given power and responsibility to look out for potentialities for hope across time — I think that’s what should be implemented in these spaces, even if we do not know what to do yet.