“Where palliative care is implemented, the use of assisted suicide or euthanasia drops dramatically. This practice is used to avoid suffering: if the pain is removed, the request is reduced by 10 times. The population is not so much in favor of euthanasia to exercise a right, but rather to put an end to suffering. And it is like this throughout the Western world.” On paper, “two thirds say they are in favor of euthanasia or assisted suicide. But when asked about the conditions, only a small minority is in favor of exercising the 'individual and unconditional right'. In reality the reason is to put an end to inextinguishable suffering.” So Gianpiero Dalla Zuanna, professor of Demography at the University of Paduacomments to Adnkronos Salute on the results of a study recently published in 'Population and Development Review', of which he is the author with Asher Colombo, a sociologist at the University of Bologna.
Research
The research, entitled 'Data and Trends in Assisted Suicide and Euthanasia, and Some Related Demographic Issues', was created to investigate “especially whether there is a link between legislation and the use of euthanasia and assisted suicide – explains Dalla Zuanna – and, secondly, if they are used differently based on different categories: sex, age, cause of the request, socio-economic condition. The third point concerns the connection between the use of these practices and palliative care”. The results relating to 13 countries, 8 of which are in Europe, where there is a legal form of euthanasia, show that “the use of these practices is strongly dependent on the type of legislation. Where it is considered as an exercise of the individual's freedom (Holland , Belgium and Switzerland and Canada), which can decide what it wants, the appeal is very high: among non-sudden deaths it can reach up to 5% of the population. Where instead, as also stated in the sentence of the Italian Constitutional Court, the appeal is conditioned, for example, by the presence of unquenchable pain, after having used all the medical tools to treat the pain, the appeal is 10 times lower”.
The second result of the review shows that the motivations behind the practice of assisted suicide are totally different from those of 'unassisted' suicide. The one administered in the healthcare sector “is required in a similar way in both sexes, while the other is 3 times higher in men than in women”, reports the teacher. In the most common form of suicide, he underlines, “there is desperation, a lack of meaning. The assisted one, however, occurs in a relational context, it is not linked to the loss of relationships with people”, but rather to the desire not to be ' a burden for family, friends or caregivers', as indicated by 36% of the 10 thousand Canadians who, the study finds, chose euthanasia in 2021 and who, in 17% of cases, indicated 'the isolation or loneliness'.
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