The Netherlands (2001) and Belgium (2002) were pioneer countries in euthanasia legislation, and it has been progressively implemented in Luxembourg (2009), Colombia (2015), Canada (2016), the state of Victoria in Australia (2017), and New Zealand (2021). After these, the most recent approvals of euthanasia-related legislation were Spain's Organic Law (2021), and recently, in December 2022, euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide were approved by the Portuguese parliament, following four years of discussion.

In this context, an increasing number of countries are currently regulating or considering the inclusion of euthanasia as a healthcare service, which places an urgent need to define the health professionals' and particularly psychiatrists' roles and participation in this process. Currently, these assessments are limited by the lack of scientific precision in the methods used to determine patients' decision-making capacity, conditioning this process to psychiatrists' personal beliefs.

This presentation will provide a comprehensive overview of Portuguese legislation, highlighting the psychiatrists' involvement.