Expanding assisted suicide encourages a culture of neglect for suffering, elderly, disabled, and vulnerable people and devalues their lives. Canada needs to promote suicide prevention and life-affirming care for all.
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If members of Parliament went back to their constituents and said that instead of having suicide prevention or mental health programs, they would like to make it easier for people with mental illness to die, there would be an outcry.
Expanding assisted suicide to those with mental illness encourages stigmatization and a culture of neglect for those who are suffering. It teaches us to support our family members and friends in their wish to die rather than encouraging us to serve them in life-affirming ways.
Offering assisted suicide as a ‘cure’ reduces incentives to invest in and improve mental health treatments. In a country that already struggles to offer adequate mental health care, medically assisted death for the mentally ill is a step backwards.
Tampering with the trust needed in the doctor-patient relationship by inserting the possibility of [MAiD] as an outcome, may undermine psychiatric treatment; ambivalent patients, knowing that [MAiD] could be placed on the table as a treatment option, but not really wanting death, may avoid disclosing their suicidal ideations to their physician for fear of having MAiD foisted upon them
