Voluntary Stopping Eating and Drinking.

Voluntary stopping of eating and drinking (VSED) is a deliberate, self-initiated attempt to hasten death in the setting of suffering refractory to optimal palliative interventions or prolonged dying that a person finds intolerable. Individuals who consider VSED tend to be older, have a serious but not always imminently terminal illness, place a high value on independence, and have significant illness burden. VSED can theoretically be performed independent of clinician assistance and therefore avoids many of the ethical and legal concerns associated with physician-assisted dying or other palliative measures of last resort, However, VSED is an intense process fraught with new sources of somatic and emotional suffering for individuals and their caregivers, so VSED is best supervised by an experienced, well-informed clinician who can provide appropriate pre-intervention assessment, anticipatory guidance, medical treatment of symptoms, and emotional support.