Medical Assistance in Dying committee  I disagree for the reason that I've said before. We need to recognize that we need different standards. We need standards in the case of mental disorders. We all agree that mental health is a distinct discipline. That's how we treat it in practice. The distinction is important,

Medical Assistance in Dying committee  The safeguards are no substitute for a standard, so we first need to be clear on what the standards are before we can discuss the adequate safeguards.

Medical Assistance in Dying committee  These are not data that are published by the Dutch government.

Medical Assistance in Dying committee  We can say something based on the data of the end-of-life clinic, the Expertisecentrum Euthanasie, but that is not what the government publishes: In fact, it's a characteristic of the practice, a matter of practice, that we do not know how many get granted and how many get denied

Medical Assistance in Dying committee  I want to clarify that I've not just reviewed the literature; I've actually studied a large sample of Dutch cases in which we looked at patient characteristics, their evaluations, how the requirements were applied and so on. The Netherlands is the only country, as I'm sure you'

Medical Assistance in Dying committee  This goes to my point earlier. I agree that a number of patients—in fact, many patients—will have a long history of prior psychiatric treatment. The question for individual MAID assessors is knowing whether or not they will truly not recover. That is what it means to meet the i

Medical Assistance in Dying committee  Another way of saying what I've said before is that what's peculiar about mental disorders is that the staging models we have do not correlate with prognosis. When we talk about something incurable or irreversible, what we know is that someone can rate very high on that staging m

Medical Assistance in Dying committee  I will respond in English. What I have stated is not a matter of personal opinion; they are my conclusions based on the extensive research that I have done. I had started researching this area when I was practising in Belgium and I decided to pursue neutral research on this top

Medical Assistance in Dying committee  To the point about prognosis, my research has shown.... We have actually, my co-authors and I, extensively looked at the question of prognosis prediction in psychiatry, looking at treatment-resistant depression as a paradigm case, looking both at clinicians' predictions and preci

Medical Assistance in Dying committee  Yes, of course. We all agree that evaluations themselves are done by clinicians very comprehensively and in good conscience. The point about there not being standards is important, because if we do not have standards for what it means for a disease to be incurable, we cannot det

Medical Assistance in Dying committee  I said it is a finding of my research, based on the best practice.

Medical Assistance in Dying committee  That is right.

Medical Assistance in Dying committee  Thank you for your question. I'll briefly respond to the numbers. The number is correct. The number of MAID cases for mental disorders has been fluctuating both in the Netherlands and in Belgium. It's 1% to 2% of the total number of cases. It is important to note that when we ta

Medical Assistance in Dying committee  I think that's right for that point, yes.

Medical Assistance in Dying committee  Could you briefly clarify the last point?