A Comparison of Physician-Assisted/Death-With-Dignity-Act Death and Suicide Patterns in Older Adult Women and Men

CONCLUSION: Legalization has a substantial impact on older adult women's engagement in self-initiated death. In Switzerland and in Oregon, where assisted suicide/medical-aid-in-dying (MAID) is legal and where assisted-suicide/MAID and suicide comparative-studies have been conducted, older adult women avoid self-initiated death except when physician-approved. Older adult women's substantial representation among assisted-suicide/MAID decedents, relative to suicide, may be a clue of their empowerment to determine the time of their death, when hastened-death assistance is permitted; or of their vulnerability to seeking a medicalized self-initiated death, when in need of care.PMID:34253440 | DOI:10.1016/j.jagp.2021.06.003
Source: The American Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry - Category: Psychiatry Authors: Source Type: research