Next year's expansion of the criteria for medically assisted death will allow Canadians like Lisa Pauli, whose sole underlying condition is mental illness, the choice to die in this way.
I would consider it a very fine line because suicide, by nature, is always a consenting choice. This does not mean anyone wants to die, most don’t. If you ask them whether they would feel the same if all their problems were magicked away, you wouldn’t really even need time to think. It’s just that, for them, there is no other solution. Or at least, not one that seems like it could ever possibly be attainable. You’re forced into it because there’s no other way to make it fucking stop.
Your condition that patients be mentally sound, I question. Either understanding the consequence of their actions (the concept of death) would be enough and nearly everyone would be greenlit with an appropriate time span for consideration, or nobody would be because in order to make that choice you’re almost certainly mentally ill.
If all it takes is understanding my own actions, I’d be approved tomorrow. Doesn’t mean it’s the first or even third option I’d choose. Just means I’m chronically broke, often homeless, and have been used and abused often enough that I don’t even bother with the idea of a support system anymore. The most impactful of my illnesses is so rare it’s hard to even find a therapist who mentions it at all, let alone one I’d click with. Of the medication legal in the states, one is not something I want to do because it has a risk of heavily worsening the dissociation that already leaves me non-functional, and the other causes brain damage.
It would be my choice, but it would not be a voluntary choice. It’s just…the option that I have that isn’t this. Which is by far the biggest risk here, of simply shrugging and egging those suffering to take the painless way instead of funding and supplying adequate treatment.
(this is, for somewhat obvious reasons, not to say I’m against MAID. I think since people are going to do this, they should have a way to do so that isn’t horrifically painful, with a lower likelihood of just making someone’s hilariously shit life somehow even shittier. But this is not a game, and the inexpensiveness of handwaving the people problems is a genuine danger.)
I would consider it a very fine line because suicide, by nature, is always a consenting choice. This does not mean anyone wants to die, most don’t. If you ask them whether they would feel the same if all their problems were magicked away, you wouldn’t really even need time to think. It’s just that, for them, there is no other solution. Or at least, not one that seems like it could ever possibly be attainable. You’re forced into it because there’s no other way to make it fucking stop.
Your condition that patients be mentally sound, I question. Either understanding the consequence of their actions (the concept of death) would be enough and nearly everyone would be greenlit with an appropriate time span for consideration, or nobody would be because in order to make that choice you’re almost certainly mentally ill.
If all it takes is understanding my own actions, I’d be approved tomorrow. Doesn’t mean it’s the first or even third option I’d choose. Just means I’m chronically broke, often homeless, and have been used and abused often enough that I don’t even bother with the idea of a support system anymore. The most impactful of my illnesses is so rare it’s hard to even find a therapist who mentions it at all, let alone one I’d click with. Of the medication legal in the states, one is not something I want to do because it has a risk of heavily worsening the dissociation that already leaves me non-functional, and the other causes brain damage.
It would be my choice, but it would not be a voluntary choice. It’s just…the option that I have that isn’t this. Which is by far the biggest risk here, of simply shrugging and egging those suffering to take the painless way instead of funding and supplying adequate treatment.
(this is, for somewhat obvious reasons, not to say I’m against MAID. I think since people are going to do this, they should have a way to do so that isn’t horrifically painful, with a lower likelihood of just making someone’s hilariously shit life somehow even shittier. But this is not a game, and the inexpensiveness of handwaving the
peopleproblems is a genuine danger.)