Opposition parties call for indefinite pause to MAID expansion for mental illness
Opposition parties call for indefinite pause to MAID expansion for mental illness
In my opinion not expanding it to mental illness is short sighted.
Many people suffer in silence, or don’t let known the extent of their feelings of their mental illness and this could be an opportunity to open a dialogue with their doctor.
This could be an opportunity to let known the extent of their illness and seek alternative treatments before MAID as part of the requirements.
If people are at that point it may happen anyway but without anyone knowing how bad it had become.
To me, this is the crux of it:
Dr. Jitender Sareen is part of a group of eight university psychiatry chairs who wrote to federal ministers and urged the committee not to expand MAID to include mental illness.
Sareen said practice standards to guide psychiatrists and clinicians are inadequate, and Canada is lagging behind other countries in mental health and addictions funding.
"Offering death when the person has not had the opportunity to get better, with or without treatment, is, in our opinion, not acceptable," said Sareen, a professor and head of the department of psychiatry at the University of Manitoba.
If mental health supports in this country were anything close to adequate, it would be a different conversation.
Agreed.
Mental health is part of our health, just like dental and medicine should be. It shouldn’t be universal unless it covers head to toe.
Not everyone’s answer is going to be the same, either, so I don’t believe in restricting someone’s access to something if they feel it’s their time. At the same time, they should be given every resource to make the right decision for them, and to try to get better.
When the only additional supports the government is offering is death, it sends a strong message.
The problem is, when is enough, enough?
Should someone suffer in hell for 10 years? 25 years? 59 years without any relief?
Medication doesn't work for everyone, and they come with side effects which can exacerbate mental illness.
Cognitive therapy doesn't work for everyone either.
It's easy for them to say "who has not had the opportunity", but that sounds like arrogance. As if everyone with mental illness can be successfully treated.
People considering maid aren't just feeling under the weather, their existence is suffering to a level that these doctors could never imagine.
It's selfish to the extreme, and extreme in its cruelty, to force someone to suffer. Or worse, to force them to take an undignified exit from this world alone.
Shame on these doctors.
MAiD should be available for anyone and everyone, however no one should be suggesting the option to people.
Pausing MAiD for mental health related things won't fix anything if that's all they gonna do.
Everything we do is half assed.
Even though it's something that's technically correct on a philosophical level for SOME outlier patients, and in an ideal world and ideal system we could implement it well, I don't think our system is anywhere close right now. Working in the healthcare system I don't know anyone who's eager for this or who knows how we're going to sort through the massive haystack of innappropriate requests this will trigger, to correctly identify the few " needles" that it's actually ethical for.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
A special parliamentary committee is set to release a report this week that could shape the federal government's decision on whether to allow those suffering solely from a mental illness to obtain medically assisted deaths.
Cooper said he was swayed by psychiatrists who told the committee it would be difficult — if not impossible — for medical professionals to decide whether a mental illness is beyond treatment, or whether someone's request for MAID is rational or motivated by suicidal ideation.
NDP MP Alistair MacGregor, one of the committee's vice-chairs, said the law was changed without proper consultation, leaving Parliamentarians and many different sectors of Canadian society struggling to catch up.
Helen Long, CEO Dying With Dignity Canada, said the government fulfilled three main preconditions for extending MAID eligibility to mental illness: expanding data collection, establishing a national curriculum for medical professionals and developing practice standards.
Dr. Jitender Sareen is part of a group of eight university psychiatry chairs who wrote to federal ministers and urged the committee not to expand MAID to include mental illness.
Dr. Sonu Gand, a professor at the University of Toronto and chief of psychiatry at Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre, said there aren't enough safeguards in place to protect the most vulnerable.
The original article contains 849 words, the summary contains 201 words. Saved 76%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
We need MAID for two term politicians.