Canadian law allows for assisted suicide for patients with psychiatric disorders

The inevitable bonus in treating people badly to save money is they are now pushed to suicide so the government gets to save even more money. Plus there is no-one left to complain about it once they are gone.

I worry that it’ll become an easy solution to many difficult problems. Take the psychologizing of ME/CFS and Long Covid for example, how many of those people are going to be corralled into this.

This is just euthanasia of the poor, right? It seems Canada is regressing away from some of its liberal ideals.

The women linked to has a disorder, and couldn't get the money to live in a place without "chemicals" that would resolve her symptoms. One of the problems with getting the government to pay for you to live in a nicer place due to this disorder is that there is very little evidence this disorder is caused by the chemicals and a good amount of evidence the disorder is a psychiatric one.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiple_chemical_sensitivity

Most media outlets have policies on not publicizing suicides, so there are countless suicides that were committed for economic reasons that we'll never know about.

I knew of someone through someone else that ended up committing suicide in a public place. Couldn't afford to live in a dignified way, and left countless notes explaining why they did what they did. All of them were scrubbed from the internet, and if you didn't know of them you would have never known it happened at all.

This happens more often than most people know.

This is horrid. Thank you for sharing this info.

I hope people don’t downvote your comment. I seriously contemplated suicide in the past multiple times, following an ocd diagnosis and a severe depression episode, and the one time I was closer to it I decided that I might as well try self medication with drugs. Better escaping reality with drugs than be dead, right?

Of course, it is a dangerous strategy and a recipe for addiction, but as you said, if you have nothing else to loose, it might be an option.

Fast forward 6 months, I don’t have any suicidal thoughts anymore, I got a job that I’m capable of keeping, and I recently started therapy since now I have a job to pay for it. I’m pretty cautious about my drug supplier, I’ve got two very close friends that monitor me to look for (physical) addiction red flags, and I try to be as safe as possible during consumption. Yes, I psychologically need drugs to function, but at least I function, and I’m not dead, and I consider that an achievement.

If anyone reading is contemplating the same solution, please do your own research and ALWAYS test your drugs. P.s.: as a general rule, I suggest avoiding opioids.

A difference that is worth considering here is that assisted suicide has requirements (meetings with clinicians, approvals, waiting periods, etc.) whereas non-medically-assisted suicide attempts do not have such requirements.

It's reasonable to assume that, at least in some cases, those that would regret their decision would not be approved for assisted suicide or would otherwise be dissuaded.

You are equating two very different groups here. The guidelines around assisted suicide are extremely strict, this is not futurama "suicide booth".

Being overly holistic about life is disrespecting the right of these people to dignity. We are talking about people with a progressing disease that cannot be cured and that would be forced to spend several months in extreme suffering just because "suicide is bad".

I hate to say "survivorship bias" in such a context, but I do think it applies. Those who are committed to the success of their attempt are likely more sure of their decision.

Throwing yourself off a bridge is not the same thing as going through the whole medical process behind assisted suicide.

Not surprising, the piece of diarrhea in the skull probably rewires itself faster than light.

Live 20+ years feeling like the worst garbage? Sure. Jump off a bridge? Hell naw, man, here's reasons to live and stuff.

But the end result of both is the same. Survival instinct is a bitch.

I heard the authors of the study tried to contact the cohort that succeeded, but not a single person bothered responding!

100% of the suicide attempts who do not survive do not regret their attempts.

This suggests to me that we should focus on increasing the success rate if we wish to minimize regret.

These two things are different, most suicide is impulsive - this has a waiting period. So to the people who want to kill themselves because their partner broke up with them, etc, have some time to cool off - though this isnt really for those cases and they are still likely to jump and/or take their family down with them.

And is it always regret or maybe shame that is hard to tell the difference or say aloud? I dont regret my attempt 20+ years ago, but it made me feel so much worse about myself for a long time because I could not handle the shame of not even being able to do that one thing right.

I am now an advocate for a humane way to end one’s life, I was lucky in that I did not maim or disable myself like other people who fail in their attempt. This should be open to anyone, because there are people who are just done or just dont want to be here.

I still dont want to be here and I have done the self love/growth introspective work, have friends, hobbies and live comfortably by western standards. Each year has just strengthen my resolve to be able to end my life on my terms and in a humane way and in the country I love. The thought of failure a second time w/ possible disability/disfigurement is not something I want, or cant, add on to being here - as strange as it sounds, it would destroy me like the first failure almost did. I strongly hope to be able to do it in my own country but I have a timeline and, if I am still around at that time, I have not ruled out being a “suicide tourist” even though I would really prefer to go out in a world that wasn’t obsessed with controlling other peoples bodily autonomy

The thing that my wife finds most confusing (she is from the USA), we don't elect(directly) our Prime Minister. We elect the party, and the party chooses the leader.

'Vote of no Confidence' is also a fun thing to look up.

The person with the most power in the country is the Governor General. (appointed not elected)

Yeah, but I'd still stack our politics over the politics of most other countries any day of the week. Every country has some weird stuff. Canada is relatively boring on this front, in my opinion.

Example: One of our biggest controversies of the past few years involved our PM going on a vacation to an island[1]. That's about it. His family was invited to be guests on a private island, and we haven't stopped complaining about it ever since, because surely there's no explanation other than absolute and total corruption. I'm only being slightly cheeky about this. Like I said... boring.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aga_Khan_affair