The announcement of assisted suicide by the youtuber Olympe on the networks
Olympe is a 23-year old young French woman suffering from serious traumas experienced during childhood, an Identity Dissociative Disorder (IDD). A few days ago she posted a video, which she removed a few minutes later, where she announced having taken the decision to apply for euthanasia in Belgium, where it is legal. This announcement produced a shockwave.
She identified herself on the social networks by her personal testimonies in order to heighten public awareness on mental health. She has become what is known as an “influencer”, with some 250,000 followers on Instagram. The young woman has for years been living with a feeling of being “fragmented” into several personalities, “alters”, 15 in total. Her personal experience is extremely heavy and upsetting: she states she has suffered rapes, abandonment, having lived in several foster homes etc.
The Belgian reality shows the total ineffectiveness of the safeguards which claim to avoid such deviations
This painful story demonstrates yet again what the Belgian “anti-model” can lead to (which some people would like to import here): The promotion of a culture where euthanasia could be a “solution”, or even a “right” for people suffering, be it physically, mentally or morally. This recalls the dramatic case of Shanti De Corte, suffering from depression, who was euthanised in 2022 at a mere 23 years of age. She had survived the terrorist attack in Brussels, and was since suffering from PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder). Or even, the case of Nathan Verhelst, born female and called Nancy, who suffered from a gender dysphoria and for whom the treatments and surgical operations to “change sex” had not relieved her suffering. She was euthanised in 2013.
The Belgian reality shows the total ineffectiveness of the safeguards which claim to avoid such deviations. Euthanasia, when it was legalised in Belgium in 2002, was presented as being “authorised” only in exceptional end of life situations. In reality, the deviations observed demonstrate that as soon as the prohibition to kill is lifted, through certain “exceptions”, a society tumbles irremediably, stage by stage, into a culture of exclusion – or even of self-exclusion – of the most vulnerable. In 2022, the European Court of Human Rights recorded a violation of rights in another case, of a 64-year-old woman euthanised due to depression without her son – the plaintiff – nor her daughter being made aware.
