An analysis published in Cancer Medicine reveals the trends of self-initiated deaths-including assisted suicide (AS) and conventional suicide (CS)-in Switzerland over a 20-year period, focusing on people who suffered from cancer.
Although supporters of assisted dying state that access to AS should lead to a reduction in violent CS, the study's findings do not confirm this assumption. The situations and motivations for cancer-associated CS seem to be clearly different from those for cancer-related AS.
In Switzerland, assisting in a suicide is not punishable as long as it does not serve selfish motives. In this analysis of data from 1999-2018, investigators found that cancer was the most often listed principal disease for AS: 3,580 people with cancer died by AS, representing 41.0% of AS cases. Cancer was listed in only a small minority of CS cases (832 people, representing 3.8% of CS cases).
There was approximately a doubling of AS cases among patients with cancer every 5 years. Also, the percentage of cancer-associated AS in relationship with all cancer-associated deaths increased over time to 2.3% in 2014-2018. The numbers of cancer-associated CS showed a downward trend in 1999-2003 and were stable through 2009-2018.
"Obviously, the situations and motivations for cancer-associated CS seem to be clearly different from those for cancer-related AS," said corresponding author Uwe Güth, MD, of the University of Basel.
URL upon publication: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/cam4.6323
