Assisted Dying and Decision-Making Competence: Recent Developments in Austria

The Austrian law on death disposition confirms that persons willing to die have the right to assisted suicide. The Austrian parliament has provided various measures to distinguish between self-determination, the consequences of disease, and external influence, and to minimize the dangers of abuse. These include an examination of decision-making competence by specialists in psychiatry or clinical psychology as an additional expert supplement if the two physicians who first examine the individual are insufficiently certain as to whether the patient is medically competent to make decisions regarding assisted suicide. The concrete details of this examination remain undetermined by law and can only be derived from other regulations or the science itself. Moreover, studying the decision-making process provides valuable insights into the distinction between assisted suicide and suicide due to mental illness and emphasizes the necessity of mature decisions when ending one's life and self.