(The Lion) — Multiple media outlets are denouncing the Netherlands’ legalized euthanasia regime after a new report documented skyrocketing cases of assisted suicide, especially among those with mental illness.

Experts are also highlighting the spike in euthanasia cases for those under 30.

In 2024, there were 9,958 total reports of euthanasia in the Netherlands in all cases, a 10% increase over 2023, said the report.

Euthanasia now accounts for 5.8% of all mortality in the Netherlands, a rise from 5.4% previously.

By comparison, suicide in the U.S. accounts for just 1.5% of all mortality.

Members of the commission overseeing euthanasia in the Netherlands are now questioning the country’s protocols, as cases spike among the mentally ill and people under 30.

A report from the government group responsible for monitoring assisted suicide in the Netherlands showed cases of people using assisted suicide as a treatment for mental illness went up 60% just between 2023 and 2024.

Since 2020, total cases of euthanasia for mentally ill patients are up 149%.

The report cites one case of a young boy between 16 and 18 years of age who “had been diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder … with anxiety and mood complaints approximately four and a half years before” he was euthanized.

The doctor consulted by the commission that makes decisions to put people to death for physical and mental infirmities had decided “the young man’s suffering was hopeless,” so he was killed at his request, the report says.

Some reports put the boy’s age at 16 years old at the time of his death.

The president of the country’s Regional Euthanasia Review Committees (RTE) called for open public debate about euthanasia in light of the overall report, questioning whether the Netherlands process and procedure is correct.

“Are we still doing this right?” asked RTE President Jeroen Recourt. “I welcome social debate on euthanasia due to mental suffering in young people.”

In 2023, the Netherlands broadened the law to allow euthanasia for children from 1-12 years-old.

In 2020, there were 88 documented cases of euthanasia because of mental illness in the Netherlands; in 2021, the number grew to 115, then stayed steady in 2022 and 2023 at 115 and 138 respectively; and then, in 2024, the number of cases exploded to 219, said the report.

“In [the] 219 reports, the suffering (largely) resulted from one or more mental disorders,” it said.

The recent increase in requests and euthanasia performed in patients with psychological complaints, especially in young people under 30, is cause for concern, said a Dutch psychiatric doctor.

“This is controversial because it is unclear whether young people at that age can meet the due diligence criteria” of the euthanasia law, Damiaan Denys, a professor of psychiatry at Amsterdam University Medical Center, told the U.K’s Guardian.

“How can one, at that age, determine with certainty that a young person with a still-developing brain definitely wants to die, that life is experienced as hopeless and without prospects and that all treatments have already been carried out?”

The number of people under 30 who have used the assisted suicide law to end their lives has grown from five in 2020 to 30 in 2024. That’s the equivalent of 576 Americans under the age of 30 allowed to die by state-administered suicide.

To put that in perspective, just 25 executions under the death penalty were carried out in 2024 in the U.S.

Euthanasia advocates cite supply and demand as reasons the Dutch should be proud of their assisted suicide scheme.

“This shows the option of euthanasia is increasingly accepted and used,” Fransien van ter Beek, a right-to-die activist in the Netherlands, told the Guardian. “This is something to be proud of as a country and not to be taken for granted, as many foreign countries show.”

The RTE report comes amid a nationwide debate about assisted suicide for those with intellectual disabilities, such as autism, anxiety and depression.

Meanwhile, in 2024 “couples’ euthanasia” – for instance, a husband and wife deciding to end their lives together – was used 54 times.