The Final Goodbye

Doctor-assisted suicide remains a polarizing and difficult issue. Despite this, countries such as Belgium, Luxembourg, and Sweden have already legalized voluntary euthanasia. Last year, Canada legalized medically-assisted death. A recent story from the US, Brittany Maynard, a 29-year-old from California suffering from a brain tumor, travelled all the way to Oregon to end her life. Using social media to say her final goodbye, Maynard received an outpouring of support and sympathy from the online community.

A recent study released by the New England Journal of Medicine suggests that the reason for terminal patients wanting to end their lives has more to do with psychological issues as opposed to physical suffering. Although discussions regarding assisted suicide commonly revolve around the unmitigated suffering endured by patients with diseases like cancer, this does not seem to be the primary impetus behind some individual’s desire to die.

While the psychological issues are complex, many terminal individuals wanting to end their lives early share similar characteristics. These people tended to be decisive and independent—in control of their lives. This attitude in life tended to correlate with a desire to control the manner in which they died.

Maynard’s final Facebook post expresses this idea as she wrote: “Goodbye to all my dear friends and family that I love. Today is the day I have chosen to pass away with dignity in the face of my terminal illness, this terrible brain cancer that has taken so much from me … but would have taken so much more.”

See Ariana Eunjung Cha, It’s Not Pain but ‘Existential Distress’ that Leads People to Assisted Suicide, Study Suggests, The Washington Post, May 24, 2017.

Special thanks to Lewis Saret (Attorney, Washington, D.C.) for bringing this article to my attention.