There is an article up on the Toronto Star right now about MAiD (Medical Assistance in Dying) and whether it's appropriate for the mentally ill.
From the introduction:
Dr. Ellen Wiebe, one of the country’s most experienced MAID providers, argues it’s about equality and autonomy: that people with psychiatric illness deserve the same right to choose as anyone else. Dr. John Maher, a psychiatrist and ethicist, calls it a moral failure: a system offering death instead of care. Both see Canada’s underfunded mental-health system as the real crisis. Wiebe hopes MAID will force politicians to finally fix it; Maher fears it lets them off the hook. What divides them is whether compassion means giving people control over how they die — or fighting harder to help them live.
This is something I've been thinking about since MAiD was announced years ago.
As someone who is mentally ill, I've often felt that being able to plan your death, would be less traumatizing for the people around you. You could plan your affairs, and be open and honest about wanting to end your suffering.
I understand both sides of the argument here, but ultimately I believe someone has the ultimate right to their body and life, and that they have a right to suicide. MAiD would allow for that suicide to be planned and painless, as opposed to frightening and potentially violent or horrifying
Dr Mayer's point that "we have a system that doesn’t provide adequate care," is correct. He goes on to say:
Many people suffering from mental illness are pushed to the fringes of society, facing both stigma and poverty. Many people I work with survive on food banks and live in bedbug- and cockroach-infested rooms. You walk into these places and think, this cannot be Canada. To then offer them death deepens their vulnerability.
Though I understand the pull to call out the vulnerability faced by many here, that ciriticism should be of the state, and not of the mentally ill. Ultimately that vulnerability, that poverty and lack of access is part of the condition. Not of the condition of being mentally ill itself, but the condition of being mentally ill, in Canada, in 2025. In this economy. With this access. With no resources, what do we actually have access to? Waitlists?
I have a decent job. I have healthcare coverage. I still live paycheque to paycheque. I don't have an easy access to doctor's. I don't have a therapist or counselor. I can't afford bi-weekly appointments. It is a struggle, every day. I try and make the time to go to the gym 2-3 times a week, for my mental health and to prep for surgery, but I go to a community gym because I can't afford otherwise. I can't afford my life right now, I buy groceries on a credit card. I feel like every day is a struggle. And that's mental ilness with the "new" addition of physical disability since 2022.
I can say with absolute certainty that if I were to live with the amount of pain I had when I was hosopitalized with necrotic pancreatitis, gastroperesis and the other compounding pains and illnesses (surgery pain, being bed ridden, pneomonia) I would opt for MAiD. It wasn't living a life. It was variations of discomfort to extreme pain over extended periods of time.
I hope this piece and articles like it make their way into the public sphere so we can keep discussing MAiD. I want it to be destgimatized, and I want our relationship to our inevitable death to be something we can have more control over, especially when in unbelieveable pain.
