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Photo: ANP
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The Dutch Association for a Voluntary End of Life (NVVE) calls it “completely unacceptable” that people with a psychiatric condition have to wait two years for the assessment of their euthanasia request. That is why she urges health minister Hugo de Jonge to “work together with mental health care on a delta plan for psychiatry and euthanasia”.
That plan should lead to better training and guidance for psychiatrists, so that they can more often process a euthanasia request from their patient themselves. “If they are not heard, violent suicide should not become the only solution,” says NVVE director Agnes Wolbert of the patients in question.
The NVVE responds to a message in Trouw about these patients. “Our waiting list is mainly a signal that regular mental health care still does not often seriously respond to a request for euthanasia. We are referred to too often ”, says Paulan Stärcke of the Expertise Center Euthanasia in the newspaper.
Just like nine months ago, the center employs seven psychiatrists, while more are needed. According to the center, it is not possible to recruit additional employees, while the number of requests for help continues to increase. Last year there were 3,122 requests for help, 22 percent more than in 2018.
The Euthanasia Expertise Center, formerly known as the End of Life Clinic, provided euthanasia to psychiatric patients more than sixty times last year. Doctors who are not affiliated with the center only did so six times. Stärcke wants more psychiatrists to provide euthanasia themselves, because they know the patient best.
The NVVE set up the Expertise Center itself eight years ago, because some people could not go to their own doctor for euthanasia.
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