Published on
Updated
Reading 3 mins.
To put an end to her suffering, Olympe, a young French woman with dissociative identity disorder (DID), decided to resort to “assisted suicide” in Belgium. A controversial choice.
With her big clear eyes and her outspokenness, the YouTuber Olympe has been able to unite a large community – 225,000 followers on Instagram alone. But behind this angelic face hides a young girl in pain, determined to end her life. Assisted suicide is still prohibited in France, the young woman revealed to have turned to Belgian doctors, in order to plan her end of life.
The YouTuber wants to be euthanized at the end of 2023
If many media indicate that Olympe – Lily of her real identity – wishes to die because of her dissociative identity disorder (she lives with a dozen personalities), it is not so.
It was his various disorders – depressive and eating – that pushed him to make this decision.
Doctors have indeed identified in her a serious depression, when she was barely eight years old. Then, at age 14, they detected a generalized anxiety disorder and an eating disorder.
At the age of sixteen, a new diagnosis falls: Olympe has a borderline disorder and a dissociative identity disorder TDI.
Multiple sufferings, which pushed him to contact doctors in Belgium to have recourse to assisted suicide – medical aid given to a person who asks to die.
“I’m exhausted”
If this announcement has been the subject of many reactions, the young woman specifies in her Instagram videos that this choice is the fruit of a mature reflection; who is not motivated by his Dissociative Identity Disorder.
It is his traumas, his PTSD (complex post-traumatic stress disorder) and his borderline disorder which are the major causes of this “difficult decision”, in addition to his past.
“Although I am a very resilient person, I have my limits like any human, and my limits have been pushed to their limits for years. I’m very tired and I don’t tell anyone that this is the solution (assisted suicide) and I don’t wish anyone on this earth to ever have to think about it.“, she admits. And to add: “The main reason is that I’m exhausted and you can’t know it because you haven’t lived my life (…) you can’t necessarily understand my decision and I’m not asking you.”
If the young woman has already scheduled her euthanasia for this end of the year, she nevertheless wishes to take full advantage of these last months.
A decision that does not approve of Dr Alexis Burnod, head of the mobile palliative care team at the Institut Curie.
“I think it’s time to sound a big warning. We are facing a kind of appetite for induced death, an unhealthy peopolization of assisted suicide, which in my view is very serious. We risk witnessing a phenomenon of suicidal contagion. In other words, by exposing the population to stories that promote assisted suicide, the number of acts will increase” warns the expert, before adding “Even if I absolutely do not question the suffering of this young woman, who deserves to be relieved, to decide that depressive disorders, on their own, constitute a valid reason for assisted suicide seems to me to be madness.“.
Exposure to suicide multiple times 2 to 4 times the risk of acting out
Faced with this delicate subject, the authorities are formal: people exposed directly or indirectly to a suicidal event are more at risk of having suicidal thoughts, or even of committing suicide.
At the individual level, being exposed to suicide would thus multiply by 2 to 4 times the risk of acting out. At the collective level, the examples of serial suicides in institutions (hospitals, businesses, prisons, schools, etc.), trades (police, army, doctors, etc.) or places at risk (railways, bridges , cliffs, forests…) are also not lacking. And the influence of the media or social networks is no stranger to it.
In case of dark thoughts, several numbers are available to listen to the French (Suicide Listening: 01 45 39 40 00; national suicide prevention number: 3114, etc.).