Oregon Public Broadcasting

Next month voters in Washington State will decide Initiative 1000 - an Oregon-style “death with dignity” measure.

The law’s been on the books in Oregon for a decade. Now a new study shows one-in-four patients who requested lethal drugs under the Oregon law were depressed.

Correspondent Austin Jenkins reports on a study conducted by researchers at Oregon Health and Science University.

The study – published in the British Medical Journal - followed 58 patients in Oregon who requested aid in dying. Most were terminally ill with cancer or Lou Gehrig’s disease.

Of the 58, twenty-six percent were independently diagnosed with depression.

Psychiatrist Linda Ganzini is the study’s lead author. She says doctors need to do a better job of screening for depression before they write a lethal prescription.

Linda Ganzini: “What it means is that primary care physicians probably need to use more rigorous or well-validated instruments rather than just their gut impression about whether the patient is depressed.”

Oregon’s law requires Death with Dignity patients who exhibit signs of depression be referred to a mental health professional. But Ganzini says of the 47 Oregon residents who died under the law last year, none were referred.