Autistic teen overwhelmed with depression is euthanised

A Dutch autistic teenager who attempted to commit suicide has undergone euthanasia at the hands of medics in the Netherlands, it has been revealed.

According to the Regional Euthanasia Review Committees’ 2024 Annual Report, the 16 to 18-year-old boy struggled with overstimulation, “felt misunderstood by others”, and suffered from depression as a child.

Although he had not exhausted treatments for his depression, the report stated that this would not have affected his “autistic spectrum disorder, which was the cause of his problems and the basis for his request for euthanasia”.

The 2023 case is now receiving attention amid Canada’s plans to extend euthanasia to those suffering from mental ill health next year.

Young adults

Writing in the Psychiatric Times, Dutch doctors noted that euthanasia requests on “psychiatric grounds have risen sharply, with a disproportionate increase among young adults and, more recently, minors.

“The Dutch model, once presented internationally as careful and balanced, is now attracting attention for a different reason: growing uncertainty about whether psychiatry has crossed a boundary it cannot coherently justify.”

In 2024, 219 patients whose suffering was “(largely)” caused by psychiatric disorders were killed by euthanasia. Such cases have been legal in the Netherlands since 2002.

‘Eugenics’

Alex Schadenberg, Executive Director of the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition, commented: “This was a young autistic person with sensory issues who experiences the world in a different way. This killing of an autistic person, is based on a eugenic ideology.

“To make a decision that life with autism is worse than death, and so much so that the psychiatrist kills the person is to believe that some lives are not worth living. This eugenic ideology is very dangerous.”

Dr Sonu Gaind, a Professor in the Temerty Faculty of Medicine at the University of Toronto, added that such examples “should be taken as a wake-up call”.