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CBC Ideas: MAID law on the right to die should respect individual choice: ethicist

Fiona Odlum — Fri, 17 May 2024 17:54:39 +0000

Arthur Schafer has thought a lot about life and death.

As a leading bioethicist, he has written and lectured extensively on medically assisted death in Canada, also known as MAID, and has helped shape national policy on it.

Earlier this year, the federal government wavered on implementing ground-breaking, but controversial new rules allowing for the possibility of MAID for patients suffering solely from severe mental illness — the second delay that has now pushed its implementation until 2027. It is only the latest chapter in what remains an evolving policy.

To read the full article and listen to the entire interview, please visit CBC Ideas.

CBC News: Opposition parties call for indefinite pause to MAID expansion for mental illness

Fiona Odlum — Mon, 29 Jan 2024 21:29:18 +0000

Only a small number of people whose sole medical condition is a mental illness would be eligible for MAID, said Long. She said they’re individuals who have endured many years of suffering and have tried multiple treatments.

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.

CTV Winnipeg: Critics caution against plan to expand medical assistance in dying to those with mental illness

Fiona Odlum — Mon, 18 Dec 2023 21:29:20 +0000

Hope is what kept Laurel Walker alive as thoughts of suicide overwhelmed her, and that is exactly what she says would be stripped from people battling the same darkness if Canada forges ahead with plans to expand medical assistance in dying to those with a mental disorder.

Proponents of the expansion, set for March 17, maintain that providing MAID to people with an incurable physical illness without giving the same right to those with an irremediable mental illness amounts to discrimination on the basis of a disability. Critics counter that there is insufficient evidence to predict whether or not someone will recover from a mental illness.

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