reports are highly condensed and adjusted for a broader audience, leading to dilution of the subtle and complicated description of complex psychiatric problems. This often led to unclear statements like ‘depressive symptoms’, and the description of personality disorders remained especially unclear. The reports are not primarily meant for scientific research. This also introduces a selection bias where only the ‘remarkable’ cases get published. Furthermore, between the research conducted by Kim et al. in 2016 and our current analysis, the publication practice has changed and, as a result, a substantially smaller proportion of psychiatric cases were published (63% vs. 22%). This has to be taken into account in the comparisons made between the studies. CONCLUSION This study aims to provide an overview of PAD among Dutch psychiatric patients between 2015 and 2017 and put it in a longitudinal perspective. To achieve this objective, we analyzed reports that were published online by the Regional Euthanasia Review Committees in this period. They show that relatively many women of diverse ages and with complex and chronic psychiatric problems die through PAD. This research adds to the scarce quantitative empirical research available on the topic of psychiatric PAD. Future research should focus on a completer and more undiluted overview of the patients and process leading up to euthanasia. A method could be to directly study the medical records underlying the online published RTE reports; these are currently not accessible for research. Also, much is unknown about the patients who get denied euthanasia. Finally, qualitative research among patients and families that go through a euthanasia procedure is not yet available. EUTHANASIA OF DUTCH PATIENTS WITH PSYCHIATRIC DISORDERS BETWEEN 2015 AND 2017 | 47 3
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