Euthanasia in Older Adults with Psychiatric Disease

The experience of the countries where physician-assisted death is decriminalised shows a tendency to broaden the clinical, age and legal assumptions for its access. People in mental distress due to a psychiatric illness are now able to request physician-assisted death in some jurisdictions. Given the impossibility of identifying an incurable or irreversible injury through ancillary diagnostic tests and the fact that psychiatric disorders demand complex and holistic treatments (not always available), it is difficult to determine that a disease is incurable and provokes unbearable suffering. In older adults with psychiatric disease, a clinically and socially idiosyncratic group, these shortcomings assume particular relevance. The research described in this book aimed to highlight the problem of the low literacy levels in this age group, reflect on the Constitutional feasibility of Euthanasia in Portugal, make available a validated psychometric instrument to assess attitudes towards euthanasia and do a multidimensional study of the attitudes towards euthanasia of older adult patients with mixed anxiety-depressive disorder.

Autorentext
Luís FonsecaBirthdate: January, 1978- Medicine Doctor, Faculty of Medicine, University of Coimbra, Portugal.- Psychiatry Consultant.- Doctorate in Bioethics, Faculty of Medicine, University of Porto, Portugal.- Head of Psychogeriatrics/Cognitive Disorders Unit, Psychiatry Department, Senhora da Oliveira Hospital, Guimarães, Portugal.