Canada’s Liberal Government Awaits Findings of Death Panel
Headline Health – Sarah Palin was ridiculed and subjected to mainstream media “fact-checking” when she predicted that socialized medicine in the U.S. (aka Obamacare) would create rationing and out of necessity lead to “death panels.” Now Canada — which has had socialized medicine since 1968 and has been rationing medicine for years — has formally instituted an “expert panel” to decide which citizens should be deemed too mentally incompetent to live.
NATIONAL POST, CANADA – Most people who seek a doctor’s help to die are already dying of cancer.
With terminal cancer, “there is something inside the body that can be seen,” says Dutch psychiatrist Dr. Sisco van Veen, tumours and tissues that can be measured or scanned or punctured, to identify the cells inside and help guide prognosis.
You can’t see depression on a scan. With the exception of dementia, where imaging can show structural brain changes, “in psychiatry, really all you have is the patient’s story, and what you see with your eyes and what you hear and what the family tells you,” van Veen says.
Most mental disorders lack “prognostic predictability,” which makes determining when psychiatric suffering has become “irremediable,” essentially incurable, particularly challenging.
“Sometime in April, an expert panel struck by the Liberal government to propose recommended protocols for Medical Assistance In Dying for mental illness will present its report to the government.” – NATIONAL POST, CANADA [Highlights added]
It’s a Liberal government death panel, the very thing Sarah Palin was derided for when she tried to warn America about it. – Headline Health
Some say practically impossible. Which is why van Veen says difficult conversations are ahead as Canada moves closer to legalizing doctor-assisted deaths for people with mental illness whose psychological pain has become unbearable to them.
One year from now, in March 2023, Canada will become one of the few nations in the world allowing medical aid in dying, or MAID, for people whose sole underlying condition is depression, bipolar disorder, personality disorders, schizophrenia, PTSD or any other mental affliction.
“My hope is that psychiatrists will move cautiously and carefully to make sure MAID is not being used as something instead of equitable access to good care.” – Dr. Grainne Neilson, Psychiatrist [Putting patients to death instead of caring for them is precisely what Sarah Palin warned about. – HH]
In the Netherlands, MAID for irremediable psychiatric suffering has been regulated by law since 2002, and a new study by van Veen and colleagues underscores just how complicated it can be. How do you define “grievous and irremediable” in psychiatry?
Is it possible to conclude, with any certainty or confidence, that a mental illness has no prospect of ever improving? What has been done, what has been tried, and is it enough?
“I think there’s going to be lots of uncertainty about how to apply this in March 2023,” says Dr. Grainne Neilson, past president of the Canadian Psychiatric Association and a Halifax forensic psychiatrist … READ MORE.
