Canada Will Soon Allow People With Mental Illness to Choose Medically Assisted Death

People suffering from mental illness will soon be included under the criteria for eligibility in an assisted death program in Canada, according to a report.

Canada will allow people with mental illness to choose medically assisted death beginning next year, according to a report.

The Medical Assistance in Dying program, known by its acronym MAID, for adults with terminal illnesses has been legal since 2016.

It was amended in 2021 to take into account people with incurable conditions, and beginning in March 2024 it will include people whose sole underlying condition is mental illness.

The provision will make Canada one of the most expansive countries in the world when it comes to medical assistance in dying, a Canadian panel's report to parliament said, Reuters reported.

But advocates for the disabled fear the change is happening too rapidly and will put people at risk for opting for MAID, especially those who are unable to access social services. 

Canada's Justice Minister, David Lametti, countered the criticism. 

"We have gotten where we are through a number of very prudent steps," Lametti told Reuters. "It's been a slow and careful evolution. And I'm proud of that."

According to figures from 2021, the most recent year available, 10,064 people died through medically assisted death, about 3% of Canadians that year.

That figure is 4.5% in the Netherlands and 2.4% in Belgium where assisted dying has been legal since 2002.

Still, medical experts told the wire service that mental illness shouldn't be one of the criteria because it is often difficult to determine whether a mental illness is irremediable, as the law requires. 

"We don't even understand the biology of most mental illnesses," Sonu Gaind, chief psychiatrist at Toronto's Sunnybrook Health Sciences Center, told Reuters. 

Others fear people with low incomes or with intellectual or physical disabilities will be vulnerable. 

"My biggest fear is that we go to this absolute terminal end and people die but we haven't invested time, money, people in putting the things in place that would mean that people don't want to consider" assisted death, Michelle Hewitt, co-chair of the advocacy group Disability Without Poverty, told Reuters. 

Hewitt recalled the case of Sean Tagert, a British Columbia man suffering from ALS, or Lou Gehrig's disease, who opted for medically assisted death in 2019 after he struggled to find round-the-clock care.

"He was very clear on what he wanted - more care hours at home - and when he was told he would have to move to a care facility a distance from his family, particularly his young son, he used MAID," Hewitt said.