Switzerland allowed euthanasia to suffering mental illnesses

The court decision in Switzerland puts mental disorders on one step with severe physical ailments: the country's highest court - the federal tribunal allowed people suffering from severe mental illnesses to achieve the right to euthanasia. Euthanasia in this country has been resolved for several years now, to persons suffering from incurable diseases involving a fatal outcome.

"It must be admitted that an incurable, constant, severe mental disorder can cause the same suffering as physical diseases, making life unbearable for the patient in the long run," the court resolution said by the MIGNEWS agency.

“If the desire to die is based on an independent decision, which takes into account all the circumstances, then a mentally ill person can be written out by the sodium and thus help in suicide,” says a decree published on February 2. “It should be recognized that an incurable, constant, acute mental disorder can cause suffering similar to the patient with unbearable in a long -term perspective.”

Switzerland is one of the few states where incurably sick people have been helping to die since 1998. In this country there are various organizations that help people to die, and the provision of similar assistance in accordance with Swiss legislation is non -punishable if there are no "selfish motives" for this.

The current decision was made in the case of the request of a 53-year-old man with a severe manic-depressive psychosis on the receipt of a fatal dose of sleeping pills without a recipe. The last time this issue was considered in court in October 2006 and ended with a refusal, but the non -profit organization of Dignitas from Zurich, which advises people who want to commit suicide, achieved a revision of the case .

Euthanasia - the killing of deadly ill patients at their request - has become the subject of hot controversy in connection with the achievements of medicine, allowing to extend the lives of hopelessly sick in the second half of the twentieth century.

Opponents of euthanasia remind of the program operating in Hitler Germany for the supposedly voluntary killing of mentally ill and elderly people who claimed 50 thousand people.

The Netherlands legalized euthanasia in 2001, Belgium in 2002, and in France and Britain, deadly sick people are allowed to refuse treatment. In Germany, on the other hand, euthanasia is prohibited by law and entails a punishment of imprisonment from 6 months to 5 years.