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Ms Strcke will also show films of two families of patients with psychiatric conditions
whose euthanasia she performed.
One is the son of an 84-year-old woman who had chronic depression. A second
features the parents of a woman with PTSS, chronic depression and a personality
disorder, who chose euthanasia aged 34, when her daughter was three years old.
You can prepare, you can say goodbye, you are present with someone, and it can be a
loving memory not only hurt, as suicide is only hurt.
I interviewed her parents the year after her death, says Strcke.
They expressed gratitude that her life could end this way and not in a violent one.
"The child was already lodged with her father, whom she had divorced.... The little
child was present at the funeral and stays with the grandparents every two weeks.
They were sure and I was as well that her mother would die by suicide if I didnt help
her die.
You can prepare for [euthanasia], you can say goodbye, you are present with
someone, and it can be a loving memory not only hurt, as suicide is only hurt.
I think there is a lot of unconscious resistance amongst psychiatrists against the idea
of euthanasia. Our patients deserve that we examine that before we make a stand.
Other ethicists disagree. Dr Erwin Kompanje, assistant professor of clinical ethics
at Erasmus MC University Medical Centre, was stunned, surprised and alarmed by
a television programme about the End-of-Life clinic in February.
He told The Telegraph: Many psychiatric cases revolve around how much suffering
the subject can bear. Some find their mental suffering so unbearable that they want to
die, while others find it bearable in a similar situation.
"That makes it difficult to judge: has everything has been tried in a therapeutic sense?
Unbearable suffering can no longer be measured in a patient with dementia. Anyone
can prepare a living will with a dementia clausebut the question is whether this
individual, now demented, experiences life as unbearable suffering.
"It is usually the relatives of the patient suffering seeing their loved one with
dementia.
But that is not a reason to terminate life, even if these relatives say that the demented
person would not have wanted this.
The conference's organisers, the Dutch foundation for voluntary ending-of-life
(NVVE) is also lobbying the Dutch government for trials of a suicide pill currently
used in Oregon.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/05/11/netherlands-sees-sharp-increase-in-peoplechoosing-euthanasia-du/