What is your thinking exactly? That the victim and doctor went up to that because they found it was a good laugh, and a fun joke to carry over 6 years?

Not OP, but as someone who has some experience with anti-depressants, I had a similar reaction.

Antidepressants are tricky. They can take awhile to work, and usually the goal is subtle changes in one’s brain chemistry.

I’m not a doctor and was never taking more than 1-2 meds at any one time, but the article made it sound like the primary things they tried involved “throw some more meds at it”. And these meds can also directly impact one’s emotional state, sometimes to the point that they make things definitively worse.

When dealing with things that happened to us, meds are like a cast or bandage. They help hold things in place while healing happens. Healing from trauma doesn’t just happen by taking meds. It happens by doing sometimes grueling internal work.

> That the victim and doctor went up to that because they found it was a good laugh, and a fun joke to carry over 6 years?

This is a pretty bizarre conclusion.

Obviously none of us have all of the details, but to me, the takeaway is “maybe throwing more meds at this is not the answer”.

To conclude this is not to imply that they didn’t take what they were doing seriously.

She even reflects on this in one post where she mentions that maybe meds aren’t the only solution.

I can't speak for OP. My thinking is, if 11 antidepressants are prescribed, SOME must be the SSRI types that have known side effects of homicide and suicide. I think there is an ethical question of a doctor prescribing both the antidepressants and a euthanization. Even if a separate practitioner was involved for the final decision. I'm not convinced it is possible for a fully volitional decision to be made by the deceased if her capacity were diminished by the antidepressants.

> I think there is an ethical question of a doctor prescribing both the antidepressants and a euthanization.

Very good point.

The person prescribing the antidepressant medications and the two psychiatrists evaluating and approving the euthanasia were different.

Here’s my question - if the government is going to allow you to legally have professional help in killing yourself, is it also going to allow you to legally try every possible substance which might conceivably make your life bearable enough that you no longer want to do that-including psychedelics, heroin, etc? I’m pretty sure the answer in Belgium (and many other jurisdictions with legal euthanasia/assisted suicide) is “no”, which to me seems deeply perverse.

there is such a thing a incompetence, malpractice, and overprescription...

"And earlier this year, Shanti chose to be euthanised, a procedure which is legal in Belgium, and died on May 7 after two psychiatrists approved her request."

She was killed by doctors.

Without more information, I would take “11 antidepressants” with a grain of salt.

I don’t think increasing your sodium intake by such a small amount would make a difference.

Could be that she tried 11 at different times, not that it’s been all 11 at one time for years.

It’s in the article.

> In one post, she wrote: "I get a few medications for breakfast. And up to 11 antidepressants a day.

Seems like that could mean 11 pills of an unknown number of different antidepressants per day.

Nobody would prescribe 11 different drugs in the same class. But some people are on an SSRI, an antipsychotic, a mood stabiliser, an anoxyltic, etc. 11 at once is almost surely an exaggeration, but 4 at once is not unheard of (generally considered to be outside of best practice except in exceptional situations, but often not so severely outside best practice that the prescriber will be disciplined.)

I mean, it’s a news article, so I take the “facts” they lay out with a pinch of salt. From experience, finding a working drug is hard, sometimes impossible. Sure, if she was on 11 at once, that would probably be extreme, but even then I’d rather trust her doctors than my own lay opinion.

As someone with experience with antidepressants, if my doc had me on 11, I’d be talking to new doctors.

You could be right and this is an exaggeration, but it’s a quote directly attributed to her, and it’s the only info we have. Otherwise we might as well not discuss any of this.

I don’t think any of us have enough good info about this situation to form solid opinions, but I do think the circumstances sound like they need more scrutiny.

It sounds like the case is getting scrutiny, so I guess us strangers who have no connection to the case might find out more later.

I hope it's was just some hyperbole from a mentally distressed woman. 11 antidepressants would cause stuff like serotonin syndrome. It would make you sick for sure, I don't know what else it would do.

I knew someone on psych meds through her teens and twenties. She started hallucinating, and I told her it was probably the shitload of drugs her shrinks were giving her. She had so many pills to take, it was like she might run out of room for food. Her school nickname was Pillbottle.

She started using THC (hadn't used it even recreationally before then), and weaned off using her meds. Not only the hallucinations stopped... so did a LOT of her other symptoms. She became way more normal than I ever knew her as being, and got in a few years of full time employment doing public speaking to some surprisingly high level audiences.

The more meds she was taking, the worse her mental health got. One pill made her keep sticking her tongue out. Another pill countered that reaction. And so on. So, eleven different meds is entirely possibly what the person in the article meant.

Not surprisingly, cutting off the handfuls of pills brought my friend back to Earth, and now she's using more human (non-chemical) therapy-related efforts to help her mental health.

She would have eventually killed herself if the drugs didn't eventually poison her first. Now she's pretty much down to suffering age-related aches and pains instead, doing native Powwows, and fending for her demanding and shockingly obese orange cat. She still has the borderline personality, but living a much better life.

In her words "less crazee!" without all the pills.