Stigma of mental illness clouds MAID expansion, patient and psychiatrist say

WARNING: This story includes discussion of suicidal thoughts

Canadians suffering from debilitating mental illness cannot yet legally qualify for medical assistance in dying, unlike almost all others with severe illnesses — a restriction some advocates feel is rooted in stigma.

Eligibility for MAID was set to expand in March to include people with mental illness.

But on Monday, Health Minister Mark Holland accepted the majority recommendations of a parliamentary committee that warned Canada's health system is not ready to allow MAID for people with only a mental illness because there's too much work to do before the legislation was set to expand.

"The question here is one of readiness," Holland said. Eventually, people "trapped in mental torture" who've exhausted all avenues to alleviate their suffering should have the right to MAID just as Canadians with physical illnesses do, he said.

Graeme Bayliss wants the right, at some point, of a doctor-assisted death.

Bayliss, 34, has lived with depression and obsessive compulsive disorder since his teens and says he is currently managing.

But he says he finds the possibility of MAID comforting, and makes him more willing to try new treatments and medications should he face tough times again.

"It can be very disappointing when a new treatment or a new method fails," Bayliss said in an interview. "You're taking the risk of another failure, which itself could be discouraging, which itself could lead you toward suicidal thoughts."

As a MAID advocate, Bayliss says he also considers it safer for someone to receive medical assistance in dying than to be traumatized following an attempted suicide or to have family members come across a body unexpectedly.

"People get sort of lumped in together as having mental illnesses in a way that you wouldn't lump people in together who had physical illnesses," Bayliss said.

Stigma, he says, is also reflected in a lack of familiarity with the differences between psychosis and mild depression.

"It's that apparent lack of nuance in the way that we think about mental illness as a society broadly," Bayliss said.

"I think that lack of nuance … makes mentally ill people an undifferentiated mass that is not viewed as having thoughts and experiences of its own."