Assisted Suicide in Switzerland: the Advent of a “Pattern for Misconduct”

Abstract

This article analyses the peculiarity of the assisted dying’s model in Switzerland. It postulates that the collectivity does not accept the act of suicide in itself; it rather accepts the fact of providing assistance for a death that is up to this day formally categorized as a “violent death”. Consequently, the framing of assisted dying and its implementation can be construed as a “pattern for misconduct”, which opens an original and pragmatic angle to understand one of the social issues in relation with the contemporary ways to end one’s life.