Death-Hastening for Psychological Reasons: Dangers and Distractions

Posted on March 3, 2026 By Rachel MacNair

by Ms. Boomer-ang

Author’s Note–This essay uses the term MAID, because it currently seems to be the most common. But it includes death-hastening done not only by medical people but also by the other professionals who might also be deputized to execute it.

With the concept of staying alive until one’s body dies naturally under attack, one must be aware of developments that make doing so harder quietly sneaking in while focus is on another aspect of the issue. Could concentrating on the dangers of MAID for psychological conditions (like depression) alone detract attention from the establishment of policies that make it harder to opt out of MAID for other conditions? Although MAID for mental illness alone has serious implications, couldn’t highlighting that it can engulf young able-bodied healthy individuals give the impression that one is against not euthanasia but merely “premature” euthanasia?

To illustrate that MAID violates human rights, examples of doing it for psychological conditions on young healthy people can be relatively weaker than examples of doing it for other conditions.

For one thing, a “request” for mental-illness-justified-MAID is more likely to be self-initiated, and the death is more likely to be voluntary. But in a world where killing people before they die naturally is routine, most official death-hastening warrants would probably be initiated by a medical provider, family member, service provider, service providing agency, or insurance company’s computer. No matter who initiates the request, there’s often a risk of people complying out of resignation, expectation, and lack of escape routes rather than real desire.

If a young able-bodied otherwise-healthy person with depression requests to be killed, wouldn’t a stream of kith, kin, social workers, doctors, and counselors try to talk them out of early death and suggest alternatives? Wouldn’t insurance cover alternatives? But if a person has another MAID-qualifying condition, even if they themselves have not requested death, might some of the same people harass and pressure them to surrender to death-hastening, poo-pooing and hiding what alternatives they know about?

In addition, of the many reasons for killing innocent people, depression is the one most likely to fit the “we’re just ending their suffering the way they want” argument. Of all killings by MAID, aren’t those for self-reported psychological conditions alone likely to have the highest percentage provably voluntary?

Concentrating on the prospect of death-hastening for psychological conditions alone can play into the hands of those who promote MAID by painting an image of patient-initiated requests, discussions of alternatives, verification that — after considering alternatives — the patient still really wants to die, and the patient going voluntarily to death, often self-administering the poison, in a “loving, peaceful” setting, in the presence of only people of their choosing. This ignores the people who submit to MAID because they feel they have no alternative, are killed against their will, try to escape their killers, or are killed by trickery. It ignores the plight of people who want to stay alive but whose family wants them dead and is legally allowed to pressure or trick them into submitting to death-hastening.

Moreover, the debate over which psychological conditions and anti-social behavior qualify for death-hastening might never be settled. Will society become comfortable going back and forth over it, using it as a debating exercise? Meanwhile, couldn’t this debate hide or accept the quiet “settling of the issue” for certain specific non-psychological conditions — with death-hastening for people in those conditions becoming expected, allowed against the target’s will, or required?

Surprising as it now might seem, as late as the 1960’s, a dog care book then still in print said something like, “When your dog is old and fading, unless it is dangerous, there is no need to have it killed. It wants to live as long as possible so it can enjoy your company.” Now the idea of letting a pet live until they die naturally is inconceivable for “grown up” people. Issue settled.

It is unfortunate that the issue was settled that way for pets, and it will be unfortunate if it is settled that way for people. Will debates on fine-tuning who qualifies for voluntary MAID obscure that this is happening?

A solicitation letter from an anti-euthanasia organization in the 1990’s started with an envisioned story about a mother whose daughter one day never comes home from high school. After extensive asking around, the mother finally finds out that her daughter left school to go to a place that encouraged her to get out of her normal teenage depression by killing herself, which she quickly did, supported by professionals, without anybody telling her family before or after. Reading a story like that, one might think that is what the organization most fears. Actually, it is conceivable that laws allowing MAID for psychological reasons on some people will specifically forbid doing it for psychological reasons on otherwise-healthy able-bodied people below a certain age.

A more likely scenario, starting with the premise that the girl never came home from school and the mother had to ask around on her own to find out what happened, would have been that the girl had a disability or chronic illness, the mother’s ex-husband gave permission for her to be killed, the girl was dragged out of her classroom screaming for her life, and she was killed in the presence of her father, stepmother, and people she was told were her “real friends.”

Questioning the competence of mentally ill people to make the decision can be a double-edged sword. One must not assume the default assumption will be life. Where the law allows someone else to make the decision for a person ruled incompetent to make it, it is likely the decision will be life for healthy able-bodied people below a certain age who are willing to take psychotropic medication, and death for people judged to be too unproductive, old, expensive, uncooperative, disabled, or sick.

To back up statements about the wrongness of MAID for psychological reasons alone (in addition to it being another reason to entrap a larger percent of the population in it), how about pointing out the following:

It can lead to MAID being enforced for other reasons. Where wanting to live while in certain conditions is a legal sign of “irrationality,” since irrationality is a sign of mental illness, a person’s rejection of MAID would be considered another reason to kill them; and since irrationality is a sign of dementia, a person’s rejection of MAID could qualify them for MAID without their consent.

Suspicion that one’s family members might be plotting to get one’s death hastened (a reasonable suspicion in places where informed consent is not required) could be taken as sign of paranoia, another reason to kill.

It can be used to enforce conformity. Non-conformities putting an individual at risk for MAID could range from “annoying behavior,” to refusal to take certain medication, to not smiling for a “great leader,” to holding on to “defeated, old-fashioned” principles. After all, such behavior and attitudes could be declared a sign of mental illness. (Ironic, because in the Cold War, we were told that one reason we’re better than the Communists is that they put their non-believers in mental institutions.) In raising this point, we might find allies in some activists who otherwise support death-hastening. (How to interact with those who are “with us” on some points and “against us” on other points warrants discussions of its own.)

But these three bullet points involve cases where the death warrant is not self-initiated. And attention to MAID for psychological reasons tends to focus on self-initiated death requests.

So death-hastening for psychological reasons alone does open the door to new dangers and should be a source of concern. But it must not distract attention from fighting more extensive threats to the right to live until one’s body dies naturally.

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For more of our posts on euthanasia, see: