Assisted dying: a failure of psychiatry
Feb 13, 2018 by Jill
by Kevin Yuill, spiked:
Aurelia Brouwers’ Twitter account announced her death in simple terms: ‘Dear friends, today, January 26, 2018 at 14:35, Aurelia, surrounded by friends, is peacefully sleeping. She is finally free.’
Brouwers was a 29-year-old Dutch woman, who suffered from a range of mental-health issues, from borderline personality disorder and anxiety to chronic and complex post-traumatic stress disorders. On 6 December, she learned that her request for euthanasia, after an eight-year-long struggle, had finally been accepted. She called it ‘the best present I could have’.
Her friend Sjoukje, who was there when Brouwers died, said: ‘She took her drink and asked me: “Do you want to lie next to me?” I spontaneously started to sing a few sentences from “Farewell to a friend” from Clouseau [a Belgian band]. She got a big smile on her face; as she sank further, the smile became smaller and smaller.’
Brouwers had carefully planned her death – in her pyjamas, listening to Hugh Laurie, with her beloved pink T-Rex cuddly toy, Dido – ‘[he] has been my support since I was four-years-old’, as Aurelia put it. She asked her parents to care for Dido, who is to get ‘a spot on the coffin’ at her funeral.
Brouwers told an interviewer: ‘I think that after such a rotten life I am entitled to a dignified death – people who have a serious illness get a chance for a worthy ending, so why is it so difficult for people who are psychologically ill?’