Concerning the handling of petitions for euthanasia by mentally ill persons, the chief prosecutor of the canton Zurich, in cooperation with the right-to-die organisation Exit, has taken a stand in an agreement. According to this statement, euthanasia is allowed to be carried out for mentally ill persons, too, if psychiatric experts, by means of extensive examinations, come to the conclusion that the patient's petition for euthanasia is not an expression of his or her treatable illness but that it is, in fact, a deliberate, permanent decision of a discriminating person, which comprises the overall situation.

Only recently did the administrative court of the canton Zurich stress that petitions for euthanasia by mentally ill persons are constituting a specific complex of problems: a gynaecologist was convicted who had given a prescription for natrium-pentobarbital to a mentally ill Spaniard without extensive psychiatric expert reports being present. The person willing to die had only presented reports which were lacking a detailed account of the disease patterns and the course of the disease as well as details concerning the frequency and duration of the medical treatment. Since, according to the administrative court, the gynaecologist did not himself have the necessary psychiatric knowledge in order to judge the wish to die, he had violated his duty of care. As a consequence, he was revoked his authority to prescribe natrium-pentobarbital to persons willing to die who are mentally ill. He is still allowed to prescribe drugs for suicide to mentally sane persons.