A British soldier suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) has ended his life by assisted suicide in Switzerland after six years of failing to be provided with the treatment he needed and despite pleas from his wife to him to stay alive.
Ryan Wallace, a former soldier in the Royal Engineers, ended his life in a Swiss assisted suicide clinic in August 2026 after reportedly being unable to access treatment for his complex mental and physical health problems on the NHS.
According to Ryan’s wife, Marianne, Ryan believed he had been suffering from a painful physical reaction to medication for six years, which had never been properly treated. The medication had been prescribed to Ryan to attempt to treat his mental health conditions, which included PTSD from a military operation in Bosnia.
Marianne said that the medication did not help him, but rather gave him further health conditions, including “vomiting blood”.
“He was in agony. He couldn’t eat, had issues with swallowing, he said it felt as if his eyeballs were on fire”, she added, explaining that Ryan believed medical professionals thought he had hypochondria and health anxiety.
Ryan was eventually diagnosed with multiple mental health conditions in addition to PTSD, including bipolar disorder, complex personality disorder, autism, and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). However, Marianne says his physical pain is what made him want to end his life.
Medical professionals in Britain were aware that Ryan was travelling to Switzerland to end his life
In December 2025, Ryan paid a deposit to the Swiss assisted suicide clinic Athanasios in Basel, which does not require an individual to have a terminal illness in order to end their life.
Marianne said that Ryan made a lot of preparations in advance of ending his life, including ordering the urn that he wanted his ashes to be kept in.
“At one point I found him researching puppies. He thought I should get one, to keep me company when he was gone. I said, ‘I don’t want a puppy, Ryan. I want you, alive’”, Marianne said.
Ryan told Marianne, his family, and even his doctors that he was going to end his life by assisted suicide in Switzerland, with several of them even being made aware of the specific day he was going to end his life.
Marianne had emailed the chief executive of NHS Forth Valley involved with Ryan’s care to plead for help to stop him from ending his life while he packed up his belongings.
She revealed that Ryan’s general practitioner last saw him within days of him flying to Switzerland to end his life, saying that she would have had Ryan sectioned if she could, but she believed that he was of sound mind.
Marianne said that the general practitioner telephoned her on the day of Ryan’s death, crying, asking if he had gone through with it, apparently saying, “This should never have been allowed to happen to Ryan”.
“She felt she had failed him, but actually she was one of the few people in the NHS who didn’t fail Ryan. She tried. She just came into his life too late, and there was only so much she could do”, Marianne explained.
She stated that, for a long time, no one really took the thought that Ryan could end his life seriously, saying, “I kept being told that there was no immediate risk of suicide”.
Marianne revealed that the communications she received from the assisted suicide clinic were disappointing. “I had to email to ask if Ryan had gone through with it,’ she says. ‘And even then it was a full day-and-a-half before I got a reply”, she said.
When she finally heard that Ryan had ended his life, Marianne “cried and cried”.
“I feel I let him down. In reality, the system let him down. I believe he was failed by the NHS”, she argued.
A number of people in Canada have ended their lives by euthanasia due to an absence of care
Unfortunately, Ryan’s case is not an isolated incident. A number of people have ended their lives by assisted suicide or euthanasia in recent years in Canada due to being unable to access the requisite care and support they need.
In one case, Dan Quayle, 52, had to wait weeks for treatment he never received so he decided to end his life by euthanasia, which was granted just two days after his request.
Dan was initially diagnosed with Stage 4 oesophageal cancer after an imaging scan in July 2023. He was hospitalised in September and waited 10 weeks at Victoria’s Royal Jubilee Hospital for chemotherapy to be scheduled. Doctors assured him that this intervention had the potential to extend his life by a year, but Quayle was never informed when treatment might begin.
Quayle’s condition deteriorated and with no timeline for when he might receive the potentially life-sustaining chemotherapy, he decided to end his life by euthanasia.
In another case, a man had his life ended by euthanasia after being turned down for hospice care because his disease was twice deemed not serious enough for hospice care, according to his daughter.
Colleen De Vos, from Canada, revealed how her father, who had been diagnosed with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), had his life ended by euthanasia in 2023.
According to Colleen, after her father’s diagnosis worsened, she and her family attempted to arrange hospice and at-home palliative care, which could have helped manage her father’s symptoms and made the end of his life more comfortable. Despite the family’s efforts, Colleen’s father was turned down for the care he needed on two occasions, with Colleen revealing that his condition was not deemed to be serious enough to warrant such care.
While the family was struggling to arrange the care that her father needed, a nurse practitioner who was overseeing his at-home care reportedly began to speak privately with her father about ending his life using Canada’s euthanasia and assisted suicide programme. He went through with the procedure and ended his life.
In yet another example, Normand Meunier, 66, died by euthanasia after developing severe pressure sores. Normand was quadriplegic and left on a stretcher in the Saint-Jérôme Hospital emergency room in Quebec. He developed serious bedsores on his buttocks that left muscle and bone exposed because he did not have access to a special mattress, which would distribute weight evenly throughout his body. He subsequently opted to have his life ended by euthanasia.
Spokesperson for Right To Life UK, Catherine Robinson, said “This is an utterly tragic case where a man who desperately needed help felt that, instead, he was left with no option but to end his life.
“People who are suffering – whether with physical or mental problems – should be supported, and should be given all the help they require to live full lives.
“Assisted suicide did not treat Ryan’s suffering – it ended his life. Assisted suicide is not a form of treatment”.
