title: On the Moral Acceptability of Physician-Assisted Dying for Non-Autonomous Psychiatric Patients.
abstract: Several authors have recently suggested that the suffering caused by mental illness could provide moral grounds for physician-assisted dying. Yet they typically require that psychiatric-assisted dying could come to question in the cases of autonomous, or rational, psychiatric patients only. Given that also non-autonomous psychiatric patients can sometimes suffer unbearably, this limitation appears questionable. In this article, I maintain that restricting psychiatric-assisted dying to autonomous, or rational, psychiatric patients would not be compatible with endorsing certain end-of-life practices commonly accepted in current medical ethics and law, practices often referred to as 'passive euthanasia'.
authors.forename: Jukka
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Varelius
mesh_terms: D004992:Ethics, Medical; D005066:Euthanasia, Passive / Q000941:ethics*; D006801:Humans; D016743:Mental Competency / Q000523:psychology; D001523:Mental Disorders / Q000523:psychology; D009014:Morals; D026684:Personal Autonomy; D010820:Physicians / Q000941:ethics*; D011570:Psychiatry / Q000941:ethics* / Q000592:standards / Q000639:trends; D013315:Stress, Psychological / Q000523:psychology; D017236:Suicide, Assisted / Q000941:ethics*
keywords: death; passive euthanasia; physician-assisted dying; psychiatric-assisted suicide; psychiatry