As the West lunges toward propagating a right to be made dead, the deleterious societal impacts of being legally “MAIDed” (killed by “medical assistance in dying”) are becoming increasingly clear. A recent professional analysis published in the Psychiatric Times illustrates the lethal influence on mentally ill suicidal people — including youth — in the Netherlands.
From “Psychiatric Euthanasia in the Netherlands: Young People, Procedural Medicine, and the Limits of Psychiatry” (citations omitted):
Requests for euthanasia 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.
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This increase has had a deleterious impact on suicidal youth:
The numerical trend among youth underscores why concern has intensified. For many years, psychiatric euthanasia in the Netherlands was virtually nonexistent. Between 2002 and 2010, only 1 or 2 cases per year were reported across all age groups. This changed markedly after 2011. According to data published by the Regional Euthanasia Review Committees, the number of psychiatric euthanasia cases increased from 2 in 2011 to 138 in 2023, followed by a further sharp rise to 219 cases in 2024, representing an increase of roughly 60% in a single year.
When euthanasia deaths are considered alongside suicides, assisted dying now accounts for a growing proportion of premature deaths among young adults, particularly young women, raising serious concerns about contagion effects, shifting cultural norms, and the population-level consequences of introducing medicalized death into the care landscape for youth with mental suffering.
The phenomenon of “doctor shopping” (as I call it) has long been a problem with legalized euthanasia and assisted suicide. The problem also exists in the Netherlands. The authors point to a retired psychiatrist who has repeatedly MAIDed mentally ill patients whom other psychiatrists had refused to terminate:
Menno Oosterhoff, a retired Dutch psychiatrist whose actions have profoundly shaped public perception. In an 11-month period, he performed 12 euthanasia procedures for mental suffering, including cases involving youth and at least 1 minor. He publicly described his trajectory as a moral awakening, introducing the term “mentally terminal” to suggest an analogy between mental suffering and terminal somatic illness. The concept has no grounding in psychiatric science or developmental psychology, but it proved rhetorically powerful. . . .
Colleagues reported troubling practices. Young patients were sometimes redirected toward euthanasia pathways while their treating teams were still actively engaged and believed meaningful improvement was possible. The message implicit in such interventions was that persistence in treatment could be bypassed if even one clinician was willing to declare suffering irremediable. The clinical authority of ongoing therapeutic relationships was thus undermined by a parallel pathway oriented toward death.
As we have seen before, a rogue euthanasia death doctor can become a celebrated media figure, helping spread the euthanasia virus:
Oosterhoff recorded euthanasia conversations with a minor and made them available online. The material was later removed as the footage caused significant distress among clinicians, ethicists, and child psychiatrists. Yet, rather than prompting restraint, it increased his visibility. He became a frequent guest on television talk shows and published a bestselling book, positioning himself as a moral pioneer. . . .
Patients can search for permissive clinicians, and once euthanasia has been suggested by one professional, it becomes exceedingly difficult for others to refuse. Social media and sympathetic media coverage amplify these dynamics, producing contagion effects. Requests spike after high-profile stories, particularly among young women.
The authors conclude:
The Dutch experiment with psychiatric euthanasia, particularly in youth, can no longer be described as cautious, balanced, or exemplary. What has emerged over the past decade is an unstable configuration in which activism, procedural regulation, and moral avoidance increasingly substitute for clinical humility and epistemic restraint. Practices that appear on paper to respect individual autonomy generate, at the population level, predictable and troubling effects: contagion phenomena following media exposure, forum shopping among clinicians, widening diagnostic claims of irremediability, and the steady medicalization of social, developmental, and existential distress.
(This analysis is consistent with other studies showing that legalizing and advocating assisted suicide increase suicides overall.)
It seems to me that the only way to avoid becoming a pro-suicide society is to reject legalization of hastened death across the board. Otherwise, our cultural destination is almost predetermined. The only question becomes, ultimately, how long the slide into the moral abyss will take.
LifeNews.com Note: Wesley J. Smith, J.D., is a special consultant to the Center for Bioethics and Culture and a bioethics attorney who blogs at Human Exeptionalism.
