Netherlands approves euthanasia for a 29-year-old woman with chronic depression: “I feel relief”

The Netherlands has approved the request for euthanasia of one 29-year-old woman suffering from chronic depression, anxiety and personality disorder. Zoraya Ter Beek requested assisted dying three and a half years ago. After a long process, she will end her life in the coming weeks. “I feel relief, it has been a very long fight,” she said.

The euthanasia will be carried out at home, where he lives with his partner. “They’ll start by giving me a sedative and won’t give me the medications that stop my heart until I’m in a coma. It will be like falling asleep. My partner will be there, but I have told him that it is okay if he needs to leave before the moment of death,” she explained in statements to Guardian.

Zoraya’s case raised controversy despite the fact that the Netherlands is one of the countries that practices euthanasia the most. However, cases of assisted dying for people with psychiatric illnesses are not so common, although they have increased in recent years. In 2023, 138 euthanasias to people with problems of this type, 1.5% of the total assisted deaths, while in 2010 there were only two cases.

[Morir de la mano de tu pareja el mismo día: cuán factible es la eutanasia conjunta en España]

Zoraya’s situation appeared in the local press in April. That’s when he transcended. “When the article about my case was published, with many inaccuracies, my inbox exploded, with many messages coming from outside the Netherlands. People told me not to do it because my life is precious. Others told me that I will meet Jesus or Allah and that he will burn in hell. “It was a total shit storm,” he has recounted to Guardian.

Zoraya has explained that he justifies his euthanasia in that he has all the legal guarantees: “In the Netherlands We have had this law for more than 20 years. “There are very strict rules and it’s really safe.”

The Dutch standard, approved in 2002, says that to have the right to an assisted death the person must have “unbearable suffering with no prospects for improvement”.

This 29-year-old Dutch woman began to suffer problems in her childhood. In addition to depression, anxiety and personality disorder, he has been diagnosed autism. When he met her partner he saw hope, but in the end he was unable to recover: “I continued self harming and feeling suicidal.”

He has received various treatments: talk therapies, medication and more than 30 sessions of Electroconvulsive therapya procedure that involves sending small electrical currents to the brain.

No treatment has improved his problems. “There was nothing left. I knew I couldn’t cope with the way I live now,” she explained to Guardian.

“We are prepared,” he assured.