Voices of those who suffer must stand out when debating MAID

There were four articles in The Vancouver Sun on May 3 all on the topic of mental illness: one was about Naomi Judd, who appears to have taken her own life after suffering for decades with what is called treatment resistant depression, which is as devastating as it sounds; two others reminded us that this is Mental Health Month, which urged us, among other things, to end the stigma; and the fourth was the piece about MAID, which ended with the line that Canada may be about to expand eligibility to people “whose only underlying condition is a mental illness.”

The first was tragic to read about, two others informative yet cautionary, and the third was a travesty, demonstrating a complete lack of knowledge about severe, chronic psychiatric illnesses.

For one thing, people who are afflicted by them are, at times, perfectly competent to make a decision about ending their lives.

True, there may be times when they are truly ill, in the grips of a depressive or psychotic episode and are unable to make that decision rationally, but it is so apparent when this is the case that no doctor would ever administer MAID.

However, there are other times when they are “in their right minds,” completely rational but simply cannot face another inevitable episode.

For some, presumably like the beloved Naomi Judd who would not have had access to MAID, the only choice is suicide, which is a lonely, terrifying and still shameful death — so shameful that no one will use the word couching it with euphemisms such as the one Naomi's daughters used: “we lost our beautiful mother to the disease of mental illness”

It is right to strenuously debate whether severe, unrelenting psychiatric illness should qualify for MAID, but only if the voices of those who suffer hold sway.

I am reminded of something a psychiatrist told me years ago, which was that these illnesses are as painful as any physical illness, and in some way, even more so, in part because of the way the rest of us misunderstand and judge them. Jane Harris, Vancouver