A teenager with autism who suffered from mental illness was lethally injected in 2023, according to the latest annual report [1] from the Netherlands’ regional euthanasia death review committees. More than 10,000 Dutch people died by euthanasia last year. [2] This is up from 1,882 in 2002 and 6,091 in 2016 [3]. You do not have to be terminally ill to request euthanasia in the Netherlands.
The country’s laws provide for mental illness as a ground for assisted suicide and euthanasia and there are no age limits (including infanticide for disability) and last year 174 people with poor mental health requested euthanasia.
Four-and-a-half years after he was diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder, the Dutch teen requested and was granted euthanasia.
The boy, aged between 16 and 18, had described his life as “joyless.” He’d struggled with anxiety and mood-related problems, and where he fit in, in the world. Oversensitive to stimuli, “every day was an ordeal he had to get through,” according to the official report.
“In the final weeks before his death, he lay in bed the whole time.”
Despite his young age, his doctor had “no doubts whatsoever” that the youth had the mental capacity to appreciate what he was seeking, and that there was no prospect of improvement, according to the case report.