Kelly is clever, attractive, in good physical health. So why’s she f ighting for the right to die -- at 23?
her once how I felt, that it felt like she stole away my friends. I don’t think she understood.’
I asked if she had ever been to a party? ‘Yes, I went once and it was awful,’ she replied. She tried asking a few friends to her house for a sleepover around the same time, when she was 16. ‘ But only one came, so I felt rebuffed.’
These are, of course, standard social anxieties for many teenagers. And for all her doubts and insecurities, I found Kelly to be very affable and straightforward – despite evident anger beneath the surface – once she began to relax during our discussion. Yet trust is clearly an issue after her disruptive upbringing. So despite pouring out her upsetting life story in detail, she was scared to tell me she had a diagnosis of borderline personality disorder for fear that it would change my opinion of her.
I told her it was hard to understand such psychiatric trauma for those that do not suffer.
‘ It is like physical pain,’ Kelly replied, holding both tightly clenched fists to her heart. ‘It feels like I am breaking apart.’
Things began to spiral out of control at the age of 18 after the death of a beloved grandparent combined with a feeling of betrayal by a female psychologist she had grown to trust. ‘I could not go to classes. I would sit in the toilet all day crying.’
Kelly attempted suicide, was hospitalised, suffered eating disorders and started to self-harm.
‘It was easier to feel the pain from self-harm then the pain in my head. At least the pain from self-harm goes away, unlike the pain inside that is always there.’
She decided to apply for euthanasia after learning it was lawful and possible from a psychologist in the hospital.
‘I felt “yes”,’ she said, pumping her fist as she recalled the moment. ‘I immediately went and looked up all the information I could find.’
To win the right to die, Kelly – who has been unable to work since leaving school beyond a bit of babysitting – needs backing from two psychiatrists and one other doctor. They must agree her mental pain is unbearable and untreatable.
She applied seven months ago and is being assessed by Joris Vandenberghe, a local professor who has helped draft stricter rules for psychiatrists amid concerns that some patients died despite treatment options being available.
In t he end, only her f ather attended the meeting on Friday with her doctor to break the news.
‘My father was very shocked, he cried and I grabbed him. I was almost crying, too. It was very moving but also painful to see him like that,’ she said.
Vandenberghe declined to discuss Kelly’s case.
But he recently wrote an academic article admitting g that Belgium’s policy was ‘highly controversial and raises difficult ethical and clinical issues’.
He argued its laws had failed to ensure ‘sufficient checks and balances to promote reluctance to act on a patient’s death-wish’, concluding that more investment in mental healthcare could prevent some, but not all, of the demand for euthanasia from distressed patients.
Last year it emerged that three Flemish doctors, including a highprofile psychiatrist accused of being behind almost half the cases of euthanasia for mental health disorders, were being investigated on suspicion of ‘poisoning’ a woman who had autism.
Kelly attends a fortnightly group session with five others undergoing this vetting process where she met her boyfriend Bregt, 44, a father-of-two who grew up in an abusive and dysfunctional household, leaving him suffering posttraumatic stress disorder.
‘I have always felt I don’t belong, that I don’t want to be here. I try to conform as wanted by society but it does not work,’ he said. ‘There is this constant feeling of being an alien, a freak.’
The pair have discussed whether they should die together if they gain consent, but are conflicted. Bregt, a former social worker, fears he will not have the strength to wait. Kelly admits that while she would like to ‘ do it’ together it might upset her family.
‘I don’t want my family there. I have felt so lonely for so long, why should I have people with me when I die? I’m just going to sleep – woohoh!’ she added with a smile.
The group sessions are run by Ann Callebert, a psychologist who has had her own mental health struggles, including feeling suicidal. She said: ‘My aim is to show life can be bearable, to find ways to enjoy life, since they have the feeling it is too painful.’ She admi admits it is difficult when patients go on to be killed by euthanasia – and that Kelly, the youngest to join the group, has got under her skin.
‘I can feel her suffering. I would not want to be in her h head.’
So does she w want Kelly to w win consent to die?
‘ That is difficu cult. On one side the there is the consta stant hope she can make somethi thing from life, som something to give me meaning. But the then I can see her dail daily fight and I wou would love to find a wa way to take away the p pain.’
As Callebert says, says Kelly is ‘a tough toug girl’.
It was w disturbing to talk ta in such an open manner about the possible p death of someone so friendly and physically in their prime. But equally, her intense mental difficulties were clear to see.
Kelly has contemplated what she will do if denied euthanasia. ‘First I will try to find another doctor, but if that does not happen then I will give up. That means suicide.’
Last year I interviewed a Belgian woman with autism left seriously traumatised after being locked up in psychiatric units during childhood. She had won the right to die – but since being granted control over her death had stopped thinking about suicide.
So could this happen to you, I asked Kelly.
Could you possibly find any happiness in the future?
She shakes her head in response, before saying quietly: ‘Happy days in my life? Never, seriously never. I want this all to end.’
As she left with Bregt, I gave her a big hug and hoped that she was wrong.