• Internal medicine journal · Oct 2021

    Case Reports

    Can depressed patients make a decision to request voluntary assisted dying?

    • Alex Holmes, Peter Lange, Cameron Stewart, Ben White, Lindy Willmott, Michael Dooley, Jennifer Philip, Camille La Brooy, and Paul Komesaroff.
    • Department of Psychiatry, University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia.
    • Intern Med J. 2021 Oct 1; 51 (10): 1713-1716.

    AbstractDepressive symptoms, including those as part of a major depressive disorder, are common at the end of life. A number of psychiatrists consider that a diagnosis of major depression precludes the capacity to make a decision to request voluntary assisted dying (VAD), although this is not a unanimous view. This paper uses a case of a patient in which two different psychiatric opinions were formed regarding her capacity to make the decision to request VAD. The difference of view can be related to whether major depression was diagnosed and the association made between depression and the capacity to request VAD. The view that an absence of major depression is required in order to establish the capacity to request VAD is potentially at odds with the legal definition and not necessarily in keeping with the patient's experience at the end of life.© 2021 Royal Australasian College of Physicians.

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