Brace Yourselves

Hello readers. First let’s start by thanking the government and the majority of its AMAD committee for actually listening to and learning from a host of witnesses who urged them to delay the implementation of assisted suicide for people whose sole underlying condition is a mental disorder. Particular thanks go to members of the psychiatric profession who urged extreme caution and extended delay, if not outright repeal, of the enabling legislation.

Also to people with disabilities, mental health challenges and their family members, who risked ridicule, hostility and disrespect to appear and express their truths. Thanks to all of you for the courage and strength you modelled. (The pictures selected represent just a few of the people who spoke with the AMAD Committee. Visit our Testimony to Government page to see many more, and hear their testimony.)

The main contribution of the psychiatrists who spoke out against expansion, in our view, was the insertion of simple humility. There is so much they do not know. And even with all they do know, they are not prescient — they cannot predict the future for a given patient with any certainty whatsoever. Many patients, with care, therapy and persistence, will recover completely. Others will learn to live with signs and symptoms of their condition, with the ongoing attention, peer support, and the vigilant care of a fully funded mental health care system available to all regardless of geographic location or the patient’s ability to pay. (More than a hint of irony here!)

The fact that such a system does not exist yet in Canada must have been part of what gave the committee pause. Psychiatry is only part of a mental health system, which also requires the services of a wide range of professionals and peers who passionately believe in every person’s ability to find ways to make life livable. From psychologists to psychotherapists, from massage therapists to art therapists, from cognitive/behavioural therapists to music therapists — help is out there for those who can afford to pay. 

But Canadians take pride in our publicly funded health care system in which nobody has to die because they can’t afford treatment — don’t we? Clearly, mental health care does need to be fully funded before any kind of equivalence can be argued. 

Now to the title of this post: Brace yourself! 

It has started already, but you need to brace yourselves for a full-on coordinated attack through the media — and the courts — on behalf of people “suffering intolerably” from mental disorders, mental illnesses, neurodivergences, intellectual impairments, autism spectrum disorders, learning disabilities and disorders, eating disorders, anxiety, depression and other mood disorders, compulsive and other behavioural disorders, borderline disorders, gender dysphoria, body dysmorphia, post-traumatic stress disorder and a host of “others not specified”. The DSM, (i.e. the Diagnostic and Statistics Manual of Mental Disorders – The proposed change to MAID legislation would have applied to any and all of the catalogued “disorders”.) now in its 5th iteration, permits humanity to claim knowledge of quite a vast catalogue of specific ways of being “mentally disordered” or otherwise “different”. 

Don’t you think it would be fabulous if the media were to take up the cause of affirming the right of each and every one of these differences to exist without pejorative labels, within the broad human spectrum, and if they were to advocate vigorously for a social safety net that reliably embraces and supports all people to live their best lives, regardless of diagnosis, and whether or not they can or want to contribute to the economy?

Then we could relax. But no, the media find people who want to die, and want the system to actively end their lives. 

And some of the cases are really moving and heart-breaking and sad. We who are advocating for the supports they need to live their lives are accused of being heartless and cruel in our opposition to their freedom and autonomy to choose death. They are tired of trying. They just don’t have the energy to fight the system any more.  They want to enable a system that stops bugging them about their freedom and autonomy, and only concerns itself with their death wish. They want the system to admit that it has failed, and to collude in their self-destruction. 

Do you believe it’s cruel to try to prevent that outcome? Or do you think, as we do, that collusion is cruel? That giving up on a person is cruel? Do you think abandoning a person to addiction, to hunger, to homelessness and exposure to the elements, to hopelessness is cruel? 

As you contemplate these questions, don’t forget that although the media appears to want you to empathize with the person who wants the state to help them die, lurking just beneath the surface of what they want you to feel is something much less wholesome than empathy, and that is pity. As disability rights defenders remind us all the time, pity masks supremacy. It’s part of stigma. It’s part of “Thank god I don’t have to live that way — why should s/he?” and it’s part of “Just make it go away so I don’t have to look at it.” And it’s part of “Whatever, as long as my taxes don’t go up!”

So please ask yourself, who’s really cruel and heartless here? 

Your comments are welcome.