Suicide Help or just Useful Information?

The Dutch Society for Voluntary Life Ending (NVVE) today has come up with a website with tips for people who want to commit suicide. The site carries the names of specific suicide drugs. The association says it thus wants to provide “alternatives to more gruesome ways of committing suicide”.

The information is accessible for members only. They pay about $20 as a yearly membership fee. After paying his fee, the new member can access the site within an hour, Dutch newspaper De Volkskrant found out today.

A spokeswoman for the NVVE emphasizes that this is an information website.  It would not be possible to commit suicide in an impulse. The drugs that are required are not available immediately, NVVE says.

The book the website is based on, has been banned earlier. The NVVE says it is convinced though that this website is just giving information and not actually helping people commit suicide, which is illegal in the Netherlands. The Public Prosecutor has not yet taken action against the new website but says it is investigating the case. Officially a person is committing a crime, if he enables someone to commit suicide – or just makes it easier to do so.

Only moments after the new website was opened, a big debate erupted in the Netherlands. Jan Mokkenstorm, a psychiatrist connected to another new website, 113online, which tries to discourage suicidal people by offering them alternatives, stresses that one should “never begin at the end of the process”.