[Medical and non-medical assistance for suicide]

Assistance to suicide can only be accepted ethically and juristically if the decision to commit suicide is based on a responsible, undisturbed freedom of decision-making. However, in a selection of the patients willing to commit suicide this freedom is restricted due to mental illness or other psychiatric disorders. In such cases doctors as well as laymen are obliged to help the patient to survive. Some problems may arise from the fact that medical laymen are frequently incompetent in distinguishing between mentally normal and disturbed states.