Who is Olympe? 23-yr-old YouTuber's assisted suicide plans reveals dark 'death ward'
LOS ANGLES, CALIFORNIA: A recent video by a 23-year-old French YouTuber has not gone down well with health professionals in Belgium. One doctor who she met reportedly complained about how his country is not a “euthanasia dispenser”. In the YouTube video, 23-year-old Olympe, who claims to suffer from dissociative identity disorder and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), told her followers that she was in Belgium, and had contacted Belgian doctors, to be euthanized.
Though euthanasia or assisted suicide is legal in Belgium, one of the doctors whom Olympe consulted told her that it could take months or years for a person to have access to the medical procedure for assisted suicides, New York Post reported. Dr Yves de Locht, who has been practicing euthanasia for over a decade, was quoted by the publication as saying that Olympe "may need to be hospitalized", and that it will be "a very long and difficult process.” Notably, since euthanasia was legalized in Belgium in 2002, the number of yearly cases average in the thousands. In 2015, the country had exceeded 2000 cases per year, as per Statista.
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Dr de Locht told Daily Mail that Belgium, contrary to popular opinion was not the "death ward" for France that criminalizes assisted suicides. "I haven't seen her medical dossier but I've read her emails. She wants to meet me. We do not refuse to meet (people like her) but we explain to them that the process can last months or even years. This young woman has announced the end of her life at the end of the year. This date certainly doesn’t come from me. I need much more information before envisaging meeting her," the doctor said, setting the record straight.
Olympe herself has since also commented on her plans saying she was not out to set "an example" to young people. She urged those struggling with thoughts of suicide to "find people around them to lean on."
Who is French YouTuber Olympe?
Olympe, 23, runs the YouTube channel 'Le Journal d'Olympe', which literally translates to 'The Journal of Olympe'. With a subscriber base of 257K, the 23-year-old use the platform to journal her life as she battles her neurodivergence.
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As per the description on her channel, Olympe suffers from dissociative identity disorder, which she says stems from serious traumas during childhood, which forms later on in life and divides a person's personality into various different identities, which have distinct tastes, opinions, thoughts, and abilities. "We are several people in a body," she writes in French on her YouTube page. She writes, "Who am I? My name is Olympe, but more precisely Lia. I have dissociative identity disorder and other disorders such as borderline disorder, generalized anxiety, ADHD or even TCA (all officially diagnosed by professionals.). I talk a bit about all this on my channel and I share my daily life with you."
In her YouTube videos, Olympe narrates her experience of living life with 40 different personalities who are distinct from each other, and attempts to educate people about the disorder, which is surrounded by a lot of taboos, and in some cases, misinformation. A social media influencer, with over 258K followers on Instagram, she also engages with her followers, responding to their questions about dissociative identity disorder and ADHD, which she also claims to be suffering from.
If you or someone you know is considering suicide, please contact the National Suicide Hotline at tel:1-800-273-TALK (8255).