Why is euthanasia for mental health patients a moral problem?
Social debate on euthanasia easily shifts toward individual freedom and the right to self-determination. Can, however, a person suffering from severe mental health problems ever give a completely neutral, free, and reliable consent to their own execution?
Depression, bipolar disorder, and anxiety disorder are clinically verifiable, physical illnesses. They affect brain chemistry and the production of neurotransmitters: when a person is in the grip of mental illnesses, their ability to evaluate and weigh the future becomes irrational. How can we know then whether the desire to die represents a person’s true, healthy will or if it is merely a symptom of the illness? If we were to act the same way with physical illnesses, we would have to blindly comply with, for example, a memory-impaired person's dangerous requests directed at themselves.
The life of a mentally ill person is just as valuable and worth saving as that of a cancer patient. Bypassing the treatment of an illness and offering death as a "service" is not true equality; it is avoidance dressed up as something ethical and merciful. For the system, it is cheaper to shove a few pills into someone's hand than to fund therapy, longer-term medication, and ward periods. The ultimate duty of the state is to protect, not to help its citizens die.
Furthermore, euthanasia enables the abuse of the system: a dangerous manipulation that leads to something final and is practically impossible to monitor completely. When euthanasia is legalized, it is possible for the criteria set for it to loosen over time. We already have empirical examples of this, where euthanasia has become a solution for some to homelessness or poverty. Individuals can be pressured into euthanasia, for instance, for financial reasons or otherwise by those close to them, and healthcare can never differentiate true will from external coercion with absolute certainty. In a globally developing world, this can lead to the systematic elimination of the most vulnerable groups of people, eugenics.
Allowing euthanasia for mental health patients is not true progress. It is a sign that society has given up on unwell people.