Helen, an Oregon woman in her mid-80s, had metastatic breast cancer and was in a home-hospice program. Her physician had not been willing to assist in her suicide for reasons that were not specified and a second physician refused on the grounds that she was depressed.
Helen called Compassion in Dying and was referred to a physician who would assist her. After her death, a Compassion in Dying press conference featured a taped interview said to have been made with Helen two days before her death. In it, the physician tells her that it is important she understand that there are other choices she could make that he will list for her--which he does in only three sentences covering hospice support, chemotherapy and hormonal therapy.
Doctor: There is, of course, all sorts of hospice support that is available to you. There is, of course, chemotherapy that is available that may or may not have any effect, not in curing your cancer, but perhaps in lengthening your life to some extent. And there is also available a hormone which you were offered before by the oncologist, tamoxifen(Drug information on tamoxifen), which is not really chemotherapy but would have some possibility of slowing or stopping the course of the disease for some period of time.
Helen: Yes, I don't want to take that.
Doctor: All right, OK, that's pretty much what you need to understand.
A cursory, dismissive presentation of alternatives precludes any autonomous decision by the patient. Autonomy is further compromised by the failure to mandate psychiatric evaluation. Such an evaluation is the standard of care for patients who are suicidal, but the Oregon law does not require it in cases of assisted suicide.
Physicians must refer patients to licensed psychiatrists or psychologists only if they believe the patients' judgment is impaired. A diagnosis of depression per se is not considered a sufficient reason for such a referral. However, as with other individuals who are suicidal, patients who desire an early death during a serious or terminal illness are usually suffering from a treatable depressive condition. In any case, studies have also shown that non-psychiatric physicians are not reliably able to diagnose depression, let alone to determine whether the depression is impairing judgment.
Not all of the factors justifying a psychiatric consultation center on current depression. Patients requesting a physician's assistance in suicide are usually telling us that they desperately need relief from their mental and physical suffering and that without such relief they would rather die. When they are treated by a physician who can hear their desperation, understand their ambivalence, treat their depression and relieve their suffering, their wish to die usually disappears.
