Welcome to the 21st WCP Virtual Congress Program Scheduling

Recently, the discussion on physician aid-in-dying (PAD) extended to the context of mental disorders. While in the US, many states have changed their legislation to allow PAD based on terminal illness, mental disorders do not qualify for PAD. This is also reflected in the 2016 American Psychiatric Association's position statement that “a psychiatrist should not prescribe or administer any intervention to a non‐terminally ill person for the purpose of causing death". In Germany, in 2020 the Federal Constitutional Court ruled that the right to self-determined death, including the freedom to seek aid in dying is a civil right. In Switzerland, the Swiss Academy of Medical Sciences recently updated their recommendation, replacing the requirement of terminal illness with the criterion of unbearable suffering. This would allow people suffering from mental disorders to access PAD. The discourse about defining unbearable suffering and terminality in psychiatry is complex and challenges legal, ethical and professional positions on both an individual and a collective level. Suffering is a necessary but insufficient condition for PAD in psychiatry, the other criteria being decision-making capacity and refractoriness of the suffering. Additionally, it has to be taken into account that suffering is a subjective experience that can only be confirmed by the patient. The symposium aims at focusing on the discussion of conditions under which mental disorders might lead to such a pronounced and unbearable state of suffering, with no prospect of therapeutic improvement that - after a conscientious assessment - PAD can be considered.