Canada and assisted suicide for mental illness?

Hardly a Current Affair.

Have you got a point? Do you need a sponsor or something?

There is almost always a way back from Mental illness, there isn't a way back from terminal cancer, motor neuron disease etc

People who have mental illness are not rational in their thoughts and therefore allowing them to option of assisted suicide is dangerous for them and makes it too easy for them.At least people with non mental illness are more rational in their thoughts and therefore deciding to opt for assisted suicide can be a sensible decision, this is not the case with mental illness.

Physical pain is not the only kind of pain. No one should be denied a safe medical procedure because the general public cannot fathom the complexities of a mental illness. Not every mental illness equates to an unsound mind. Not every mental illness is "curable". I don't believe anyone should be denied support if life is unbearable for them. I also don't believe that they will just take in a distressed patient and immediately offer them a drug cocktail, no doubt there are procedures put in place, plenty of legal and medical advice and information.

A mental illness is a diagnosis of some symptoms that cause apparent dysfunction of a person in our current society. It does not necessarily follow that the person is not ever capable of having clarity of thought, rational or logical decisions for their lives.

Or do you think that everyone with any kind of mental illness is incapable of making important decisions for their lives?

And this is the slippery slope that needs to be avoided - we already have men claiming to be women. By your line of thinking, maybe we should also allow someone to diagnose as schizophrenic and they can legally be whatever personality or character they want to be that day? No meds, no treatment unless requested. Everything will be grand.

Even more worrying is that they are looking to expand this to allow "mature minors" to end their lives. Offering it as an option to someone complaining about the government not adequately providing assistance to disabled just makes it seem like a cost cutting measure to the government. Encourage disabled people to end their lives and you don't need to spend money on them anymore. Pretty disgusting attitude, that's bordering on eugenics.

It’s not a question of audacity, it’s a matter of ethics in law. When it comes to assisted suicide, it’s a question of whether or not it is ethical to permit anyone to take another person’s life. It’s not just about the option being there for anyone who wants to take their own life.

Unfortunately it’s not just bordering on eugenics, it IS eugenics, because it requires a determination that the person is unfit to live in society, that they are beyond help, with the idea that in a compassionate society, human suffering can be alleviated by ending their lives.

If a society promotes the idea that human suffering is a burden on society, that makes it less painful for people to accept that they are a burden on society and they should want to take their own life. It enables people to conclude that taking their own life is the only rational conclusion to ending both their suffering, and the suffering of others -

A recent systematic review of the literature concluded that 19-65% of terminally ill patients felt that they were a burden to others. The 2016 Report relating to the Oregon Death with Dignity Act says that 48.9% of patients whose lives were ended under the Act cited ‘being a burden’ as one of their concerns.

http://blog.practicalethics.ox.ac.uk/2017/09/being-a-burden-a-illegitimate-ground-for-assisted-dying/

How do you cure bipolar disorder?

I read an article recently on Canadas MAID system - where it’s getting criticism is how often assisted suicide is being offered by medical practioners as a viable alternative to whatever challenges the patient is facing- in the article I read it was poor( as in not wealthy) disabled people who were struggling to make ends meet with no viable prospects of a better life.

I do like the idea of assisted suicide but Canadas version seems to be one of the most liberal and least restrictive- it’s certainly a debate worth having here in Ireland

it’s certainly a debate worth having here in Ireland

It’s a debate that’s long been had in Ireland ever since suicide was decriminalised in 1993 and the prohibition of assisted suicide was codified in Irish law at the same time -

2.—(1) Suicide shall cease to be a crime.

(2) A person who aids, abets, counsels or procures the suicide of another, or an attempt by another to commit suicide, shall be guilty of an offence and shall be liable on conviction on indictment to imprisonment for a term not exceeding fourteen years.

https://www.irishstatutebook.ie/eli/1993/act/11/section/2/enacted/en/html#sec2

Significant public debate was had around the issue during the time Marie Fleming was alive and campaigning for the right to die to be recognised in Irish law which would have permitted assisted suicide -

https://m.independent.ie/irish-news/news/garda-probe-launched-into-death-of-right-to-die-campaigner-marie-fleming-35160299.html

The first person who was actually charged with an offence was Gail O’ Rorke in 2015 after it was alleged she had assisted someone to die by suicide -

https://www.thejournal.ie/gail-orourke-3222621-Feb2017/

There’s always going to be significant debate about the issue because of the idea of who should be granted the authority to end another person’s life, and the circumstances under which they may be permitted to do so. There’s no significant demand for it in Ireland, and politicians understandably don’t want to touch the issue with a 20 foot barge pole!

ECT is the equivalent of repairing a pothole with plastic explosive in the hope that the bits fall back into place by themselves.

I think posters (because I don’t want to single you out) who hopped on the word “curable” are being unnecessarily picky. It was clear from the context in which it was written, what the poster meant, given the rest of the post.

Therapies like CBT and EMDR are widely available and cheap as chips, and CBT in particular is widely regarded as being an effective treatment for mild cases of the conditions it is provided as a treatment for. Its effectiveness is in its use as an intervention therapy as part of the treatment of those conditions in order that the patient recovers from ill mental health. The jury is still out on it’s efficacy as part of a broader regimen in treating other conditions -

In sum, our review of meta-analytic studies examining the efficacy of CBT demonstrated that this treatment has been used for a wide range of psychological problems. In general, the evidence-base of CBT is very strong, and especially for treating anxiety disorders. However, despite the enormous literature base, there is still a clear need for high-quality studies examining the efficacy of CBT. Furthermore, the efficacy of CBT is questionable for some problems, which suggests that further improvements in CBT strategies are still needed. In addition, many of the meta-analytic studies included studies with small sample sizes or inadequate control groups. Moreover, except for children and elderly populations, no meta-analytic studies of CBT have been reported on particular subgroups, such as ethnic minorities and low income samples.

Despite these weaknesses in some areas, it is clear that the evidence-base of CBT is enormous. Given the high cost-effectiveness of the intervention, it is surprising that many countries, including many developed nations, have not yet adopted CBT as the first-line intervention for mental disorders. A notable exception is the Improving Access to Psychological Therapies initiative by the National Health Commissioning in the United Kingdom (Rachman & Wilson, 2008). We believe that it is time that others follow suit.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3584580/

Where can I get “cheap as chips” CBT in Ireland please? Do your chips cost about €75-€100 a week?

Given what we now know of the kind of behaviour patients In institutions were subjected to, living on the streets is a far less daunting prospect! At least on the streets they’re less likely to suffer physical, sexual, emotional, verbal and mental abuse perpetrated by people who purported to be caring for them.

Therapy involves a therapist. "Go read a book" or "go watch this YouTube channel" isn't therapy.

That tiny minority of fringe cases was enough to demonstrate a much broader issue with institutionalised care, which is why it wasn’t a disaster at all for either people who were deemed unfit to look after themselves, or their families who were deemed unfit to look after them.

There hasn’t been any significant increase in homelessness or prison numbers as a consequence of shutting down institutionalised care in Ireland. The services provided in community care settings have improved, but as dealing with the pandemic showed, they’re still a long ways off ideal, and certainly there are still many people who are homeless and suffering ill mental health who consider living on the streets a far less daunting prospect than living in institutionalised care. From their perspective, you’d want to be mad to think homeless shelters are safer than living on the streets.