A 24-year-old Belgian woman has been told that she qualifies for euthanasia because she suffers from ‘suicidal thoughts’.
The anonymous woman, says that she has wanted to die since her childhood.
She spoke about her decision in an interview with Belgian newspaper De Morgen earlier this month.
Burden
The woman has been a patient in a psychiatric institution since she was 21 but feels that the treatment did not help.
She told De Morgen: “Death does not feel to me as a choice. If I had a choice, I would choose a bearable life, but I have done everything and that did not work.”
When asked about her childhood she claimed: “Even in kindergarten I knew I did not want this life.”
She added that her desire to die is because she doesn’t “want to burden others” with her problems.
Warning
Last year, a Dutch academic who supported the legalisation of euthanasia in the Netherlands, warned of the rising number of patients with psychiatric illnesses or dementia being euthanised.
Theo Boer, who was part of a committee monitoring euthanasia between 2005 and 2014, said:
“Cases have been reported in which a large part of the suffering of those given euthanasia or assisted suicide consisted in being aged, lonely or bereaved. Some of these patients could have lived for years or decades”.
Incremental rise
Over the last ten years the number of euthanasia deaths taking place in Belgium has risen incrementally.
According to the most recent figures, the number of euthanasia cases in the last 12 months has increased by 27 per cent compared to the previous year.
In February, the country extended euthanasia to children who are terminally ill.
No Government support
At Westminster, Labour MP Rob Marris is set to introduce an assisted suicide Bill in the coming weeks.
MPs will vote on the issue on 11 September.
Marris, Labour MP for Wolverhampton South West, acknowledged “the prospects of getting the law changed are difficult without official Government support”.
Downing Street made clear that the Bill would not be given Government support, with Prime Minister David Cameron’s spokesman saying he was “concerned that legislation may push people into things they do not actually want for themselves”.