As international laws on physician aid in dying (PAD) evolve, the question of permitting PAD in non-terminal illness, and in sole psychiatric illness, is under intense debate. In jurisdictions where PAD is permissible, certain safeguards and eligibility requirements must be met for all patients making a PAD request, and one of these requirements is that the patient have sound decision-making capacity with respect to the request. Legal criteria already exist for the determination of capacity, and they are quite similar between different jurisdictions. In current debates about the question of psychiatric PAD, one concern that has been raised is that cognitive distortions in mental disorders may affect a patient's decision-making capacity. At the same time, it has been established that all persons, with or without a mental disorder, experience cognitive distortions. If cognitive distortions are ubiquitous, it is likely that the severity and frequency of cognitive distortions is dimensional rather than categorical, between samples with and without mental illness. Furthermore, currently, there is no requirement for a formalized evaluation of cognitive distortions as part of capacity assessment for any type of medical decision, including PAD decisions. The current paper examines the literature related to cognitive distortions in mental disorders and in healthy populations. It proposes that the existence of cognitive distortions, alone, cannot be used as an argument for a blanket exclusion of psychiatric PAD. It therefore concludes that further research and ethical analysis should be undertaken to examine the impact of cognitive distortions on decision-making for consequential medical decisions, including PAD, in patients with and without mental disorders.

随着有关死者的医生援助的国际法律的发展，在非绝症和唯一的精神疾病中允许PAD的问题正在激烈辩论。在允许使用PAD的辖区中，对于所有提出PAD请求的患者，都必须满足某些保障措施和资格要求，并且其中一项要求是，患者对于请求具有良好的决策能力。确定能力的法律标准已经存在，并且在不同司法管辖区之间它们非常相似。在当前有关精神病学PAD问题的辩论中，人们提出的一个担忧是，精神障碍中的认知扭曲可能会影响患者的决策能力。同时，已经确定所有有或没有精神障碍的人，经历认知扭曲。如果认知失真无处不在，那么在有或没有精神疾病的样本之间，认知失真的严重性和频率很可能是维数而不是分类的。此外，目前，对于任何形式的医疗决策（包括PAD决策），都不需要对认知失真进行正式评估，作为能力评估的一部分。本论文研究了与精神障碍和健康人群的认知变形有关的文献。它提出，认知失真的存在，不能单独用作全面排除精神病学PAD的论据。