Catalina Giraldo, a 31-year-old Colombian psychologist, died by euthanasia on 9 July after a ten-month legal battle to access medically assisted suicide (AMS) was blocked by the absence of implementing regulations. Her case, which reached the Constitutional Court, marks the first formal request for assisted death exclusively on psychiatric grounds in Colombia. Giraldo had been diagnosed with severe major depressive disorder, borderline personality disorder, and an unspecified anxiety disorder, and had undergone more than forty pharmacological regimens, nine psychiatric hospitalisations, and three cycles of electroconvulsive therapy without lasting relief.

Viewed from Bogotá, the case highlights a gap between judicial rulings and administrative reality. Colombia’s Constitutional Court decriminalised AMS in 2022 for patients with intense suffering from a serious and incurable illness, yet the health ministry and Congress have not issued the protocols required for its implementation. According to the legal advocacy group DescLab, which accompanied Giraldo, her repeated requests for AMS were denied by her health provider because no regulatory framework exists to guide physicians. Faced with a high risk of further suicide attempts after a psychiatric hospitalisation in May, Giraldo reluctantly switched her petition to euthanasia, a procedure that does have established protocols. In a final interview, she stated that the decision brought her a tranquillity she had not felt for years, but also expressed frustration that her true wish—to administer the medication herself as an act of autonomy—was overridden by state inaction.

From a regional perspective, the episode feeds into a wider Latin American debate on the boundaries of dignified death. Colombian health authorities report that 352 people accessed euthanasia in 2024, a rising figure that remains concentrated in cases of terminal physical illness. Legal analysts in the region note that the Constitutional Court is still examining Giraldo’s petition, meaning a future ruling could compel the government to regulate AMS and clarify whether mental disorders alone can qualify. Meanwhile, the case resonates beyond Colombia: in the United Kingdom, a coroner’s court recently ruled that a 27-year-old Nigerian migrant, Beatrice Solomon, died by suicide after struggling with mental health challenges linked to personal difficulties, underscoring the global dimension of untreated psychiatric suffering and the limited legal avenues for assisted dying in most jurisdictions.

For now, the dossier remains open. The Colombian Constitutional Court has not issued a decision on Giraldo’s request, and her legal team has urged magistrates to use her case as a precedent to prevent further suicides among those who cannot access regulated assistance. The health ministry has given no public timeline for issuing AMS guidelines, leaving patients in a legal limbo where euthanasia is available but the less medicalised alternative they may prefer is not.