I always have trouble formulating a hypothetical answer when there are no data.
I can speak from my clinical experience, though. I did work in psychiatry for 25 years and chaired the ethics committee.
In general, patients with mental disorders want to live, get better and recover. This is the case for the majority of patients. The majority of health problems are treatable, even those that are complex or unresponsive.
In my life, I have seen two cases, one of which involved a patient who was very determined to end his life and who wanted to die humanely because he was not capable of living.
You know, in psychiatry we sometimes meet people whose lives give the impression that all the misery has been dumped on them. When I talk about misery, I'm talking about human misery, trauma, hardship, fighting, illness, lack of resources, poverty and social isolation.
There are cases where all of these elements are concentrated in one person. This often occurs in cases of severe mental disorder. I haven't often seen people who spontaneously say they have a desire for death or want to die.
Let's take the eligibility criteria. I truly believe that nothing is simple for caregivers who are trained to treat health problems and rehabilitate patients.
You know, in ethics, we find that it's much harder to respect a patient's decision when it offends our values, when it goes against what we want for them. So when we offer a treatment, and we think it's going to work, we establish a therapeutic alliance, and generally the patient wants it, because they want to get better—