Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of (1) the study Does Euthanasia Have a Dampening Effect on Suicide Rates? Recent Experiences from the Netherlands, published in the Journal of Ethics in Mental Health on 28 December 2017, (2) the study How does legalization of physician-assisted suicide affect rates of suicide?, published in the Southern Medical Journal in October 2015, and (3) the relationship between the legalisation of assisted suicide and the rate of suicide in the general population; and what plans they have to reflect the outcome of any such assessments in the suicide prevention strategy for England.
The Government has made no formal assessment of these studies and the Department has not made an assessment of the relationship between the legalisation of assisted suicide and the rate of suicide in the general population.