Euthanasia has been legal in the Netherlands since 2002. Those suffering from incurable mental illness are granted the same legal right as the terminally ill to be euthanased, but few of them are able to exercise that right. Right-to-die advocates argue that unsuccessful treatment of mental illness should be followed by euthanasia.

Influential Dutch professor of criminal law Eugène Sutorius argues that doctors “have a duty to discuss this if patients have a death wish and there is no treatment available."

The Right to Die-NL foundation held a symposium in the Dutch town of Ede recently. Many participants told horror stories of mental patient suicides following refusals by doctors to administer euthanasia. Nurse and teacher Hans van Dam argues that many doctors are reluctant because they fear establishing a paradigm of assisted suicide for further patients.

“"Psychiatrists have a holier-than-thou attitude," van Dam said. "To put it bluntly: cancer will kill you in a matter of years, but schizophrenia is forever."

Dr Sutorius argues that "the suffering of psychiatric patients can be just as intolerable as many forms of physical suffering." He emphasises that the estimated 200 to 300 patients per year who seek assisted suicide from their psychiatrists, should be encouraged to try to begin their lives again. However, he points out that “we're talking about a small group of people for whom this no longer makes sense. Most psychiatrists will readily acknowledge that a solution needs to be found for these people, but they're afraid to do anything about it."

The Dutch Psychiatry Association’s euthanasia guidelines are ignored by psychiatrists, Sutorius says. The guidelines clearly state that "any request for assisted suicide by a psychiatric patient should first be interpreted as a request for life help. Accordingly the treatment should be directed towards finding a new life perspective." They also state, however, that lacking any other "reasonable solution", assisted suicide can be "ethically and medically responsible behaviour" in desperate cases where the patient suffers "hopelessly and intolerably". ~ NRC Handelsblad, Dec 1