Think from KERA Should mentally ill people have the right to die?
Apr 8, 2026
Charles Lane, non-resident senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and journalist, examines Dutch psychiatric euthanasia, including cases involving teens. He explains Dutch cultural support for euthanasia, legal criteria that allow physician-administered death, and the controversies around consent, adolescent brain development, rising psychiatric cases, and professional and societal consequences.
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Suffering Now Versus Future Brain Development
- Osterhoff discounts adolescent brain development as decisive, arguing unbearable present suffering outweighs speculative future improvement.
- He prioritizes current intensity of suffering over hopes that maturation or treatment might reduce it later.
Euthanasia As A Moral Middle Path
- Osterhoff frames psychiatric euthanasia as a middle path between leaving patients to unbearable suffering and mistakenly cutting life short.
- He uses a balance-of-evils moral framework (influenced by Anthroposophy) to justify decisions case-by-case.
Controlled Euthanasia Versus Uncontrolled Suicide
- Advocates argue psychiatric euthanasia prevents traumatic uncontrolled suicides by offering a peaceful, planned death with family present.
- Charles Lane questions this because the outcome—death—is the same, though advocates stress controlled circumstances matter morally.