It seems the majority of the medical community sees MCS as a psychiatric condition with real self-generated symptoms. Choosing death over living in a place because it had some dead cockroaches and not enough windows? This does not seem like a choice a mentally healthy person could make.
MAiD should be delayed, IMO, until multiple mental health professionals weigh in.
I lived in a car for years and upgraded to an abandoned rotting trailer with no running water.
I know what poor is like, and it is still no reason to end your life. Took me 10 years to build marketable skills but I eventually became a bay area home owner.
Can everyone do that? Probably not. You can still win from a bad starting hand in life if you are simply more stubborn than everyone else.
Also dead cockroaches is still better conditions than a lot of people in third world countries get.
Would you please stop posting unsubstantive and/or flamebait comments? We've already asked you this and you've continued to do it repeatedly. We end up having to ban such accounts.
I don't think the OP disagrees that a psychiatric condition is a real condition.
I think they're just asserting that they should be properly assessed for that psychiatric condition before euthanasia. That goes for any condition: they want to have at least tried courses of treatment that might fix the problem.
This is complicated by the fact that some psychiatric conditions make themselves difficult to treat. They compel the patient to avoid treatment. This is a thorny ethical issue under ordinary circumstances, and even more so when the outcome is terminal.
If the patient believes that their condition is debilitating enough to merit ending their life, it is a matter of law that they should at least have to have a doctor's affirmation that it it has not responded to the standard of care. That means treating a psychiatric condition on a par with physiological ones.
If you cannot find affordable housing in Toronto, one of the most (if not the most) expensive cities in the world real estate wise, why not just move elsewhere? Surely the country side would be cheaper and have more fresh air.
Pretty sure Calgary, Edmonton, Fredericton, and all many more major cities in Canada have decent access to healthcare from rural areas with a car. Trying to live in Toronto has been a losing battle for a long time. The wait for health care even with appointments has been a losing battle in Toronto for quite some time.
I live in NB and access to healthcare in New Brunswick (Fredericton included) is not better than in Toronto, far from it. In rural areas it's even worse, and we're constantly seeing hospital shutdowns due to lack of staffing. We (and NS as well) have had a massive influx of people from Ontario since the start of covid and the explosion of real estate pricing, but we don't have the infrastructure to support it.
"decent access to healthcare from rural areas with a car." It's the car part... She's wheelchair bound and probably can't afford a car let alone one she could drive.
As most Canadians are aware, the media’s new attention on the intersection of MAID and housing prices is really just effective reporting because it’s a story we Canadians really want to hear.
My cynical reading is that individuals are being encouraged by support workers to give an interview saying they’re considering MAID, with the hope that the media attention will help them find a place to live. Obviously I don’t know this exact person’s situation, but having lived all over Canada, I can’t imagine a scenario where I’d choose death over a life outside of Toronto.
I’ve pretty much never seen or heard of support workers or social workers encouraging mentally ill people to talk to journalists.
What I will say though is that housing costs are a huge issue for people with mental health issues because those people usually are best off staying near support networks which are rarely in low cost of living areas.
Ontario Disability Support is only $1,228 a month. The "shelter allowance" out of that is a whole $522 towards housing. Province-wide.
Disabled people don't have equitable access to transportation, let alone a roof under their head. Moving isn't the answer.
People on CERB (that is - the Canada Emergency Response Benefit) received CA$2000 a month as a baseline during the pandemic. ODSP recipients didn't receive any additional benefits.
We need to raise the amount of money that disabled Canadians receive monthly. Nobody can live on what is essentially just a smidge over $900 US a month anywhere in Canada.
I was going to write a comment about how I'm against euthanasia but after reading the article I'm not sure...
I still believe that suicide should never be the option and people that are considering it should really seek professional psychological help.
But I'm just a hypocrite, because I tried to kill myself many times and after seeking professional help, I didn't really feel like they did anything except helped some time pass, which probably helped a bit... I am here writing a comment~
The fact is that if euthanasia was an option for me, I would be dead. But because it wasn't, I just spent some time in the psychiatric ward.
Now my goal in life is financial freedom which should keep me busy for a decade or two, especially since I come from zero!
(I'm ~3.75% done!)
I'm not a medical professional, actually am not a professional of any kind, so if you're suffering seek proper help, don't let your demons win!
> I still believe that suicide should never be the option and people that are considering it should really seek professional psychological help.
It is weird to me that our society is so fixated on autonomy, self-sufficiency, bootstrapping, competition, and exploitation right up until someone has the desire to exit the whole thing. At that point they get just enough interest from others to keep them alive so they can continue feeding the sick system.
And how would they get there if they can't afford housing in their area. You think they have money to move to another country? Do you know how expensive that is?
Toronto has a high cost of living compared to the rest of the world. Hotels there can easily cost thousands of dollars per week.
A plane ticket is probably one of the more expensive parts of relocating. If suicide has already been contemplated, the person also has the ability to let go of the vast majority of their possessions and condense their must-haves down to 1-2 suitcases.
It seems a bit goofy to me that a person with budgetary constraints in need of fresh air is trying to find a solution in the middle of one of the mostly densely populated and polluted cities in Canada.
This is why they aren't forced in any euthanasia cases I've heard of. Has this ever actually happened outside of totalitarian regimes? Genuine question.
> When you die, you include many people in the aftermath whether you want to or not.
I mean one can similarly cause them pain by just leaving them. There’s no obligation to stay in relationships with people because the counterfactual would be painful, I don’t see why there should be an obligation to live simply because it would be painful for others.
Is that an argument against voluntary euthanasia though?
My parents have both told me they would sooner die than go to a nursing home. Knowing them, I believe both that they mean it and that they would be utterly miserable in a nursing home. Obviously I would be distraught if it came to that, but how selfish would I have to be to tell them "no, you must go to this place that you'll hate because of the impact it will have on me if you die"?
I certainly think there should be controls. A waiting period, mandatory psych checkup to validate rationality and sound mind. If those (quite low) bars are cleared though, I don't see any reason that people shouldn't be able to choose to die.
To your second point, doctors don't necessarily need to be the vendors of legalised euthanasia.
A rheumatologist friend of mine once expressed that he is generally supportive of the idea of voluntary euthanasia, but believes this should involve creating some kind of "assisted dying professional" role. Asking doctors to euthanize people creates (as he put it) a kind of conflict of interest; the person who is there to help you live should not be the same person who can, if you choose, help you die.
> I still believe that suicide should never be the option
From the rest of your comment, it sounds like you were facing some form of severe but ultimately temporary problem.
People considering suicide are not necessarily in this same boat, and circumstances make all the difference.
To believe that suicide should "never" be the option suggests that you're only considering a subset of people who are in a similar situation to the one you faced. There are plenty of situations which give a reasonable expectation of permeance, or cause such severe suffering that while possibly temporary may not be worth enduring.
To me it comes down to the freedom to choose, for people of sound mind making a rational decision. I'm young, healthy, and generally happy, but there are absolutely situations which may affect me in the future over which I would prefer death, and I firmly believe I should have the freedom to make that choice if the time ever comes.
This is not to say the symptoms are not real and debilitating, but it would be difficult to provide housing which is suitable if the symptoms are not actually correlated with specific chemicals in the environment.
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[ 0.10 ms ] story [ 113 ms ] threadThere's another person considering MAiD here https://toronto.citynews.ca/2022/11/16/ontario-medically-ass...
He got a happy ending[so far] as he got enough money from a go fund me to keep him going for the next few years.
MAiD should be delayed, IMO, until multiple mental health professionals weigh in.
I know what poor is like, and it is still no reason to end your life. Took me 10 years to build marketable skills but I eventually became a bay area home owner.
Can everyone do that? Probably not. You can still win from a bad starting hand in life if you are simply more stubborn than everyone else.
Also dead cockroaches is still better conditions than a lot of people in third world countries get.
I don't want to ban you, so if you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules when posting here, we'd appreciate it.
I think they're just asserting that they should be properly assessed for that psychiatric condition before euthanasia. That goes for any condition: they want to have at least tried courses of treatment that might fix the problem.
This is complicated by the fact that some psychiatric conditions make themselves difficult to treat. They compel the patient to avoid treatment. This is a thorny ethical issue under ordinary circumstances, and even more so when the outcome is terminal.
If the patient believes that their condition is debilitating enough to merit ending their life, it is a matter of law that they should at least have to have a doctor's affirmation that it it has not responded to the standard of care. That means treating a psychiatric condition on a par with physiological ones.
My cynical reading is that individuals are being encouraged by support workers to give an interview saying they’re considering MAID, with the hope that the media attention will help them find a place to live. Obviously I don’t know this exact person’s situation, but having lived all over Canada, I can’t imagine a scenario where I’d choose death over a life outside of Toronto.
What I will say though is that housing costs are a huge issue for people with mental health issues because those people usually are best off staying near support networks which are rarely in low cost of living areas.
Ontario Disability Support is only $1,228 a month. The "shelter allowance" out of that is a whole $522 towards housing. Province-wide.
Disabled people don't have equitable access to transportation, let alone a roof under their head. Moving isn't the answer.
People on CERB (that is - the Canada Emergency Response Benefit) received CA$2000 a month as a baseline during the pandemic. ODSP recipients didn't receive any additional benefits.
We need to raise the amount of money that disabled Canadians receive monthly. Nobody can live on what is essentially just a smidge over $900 US a month anywhere in Canada.
"Why is Canada euthanising the poor?" https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/why-is-canada-euthanisin...
Discussed previously on HN:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32922399
I still believe that suicide should never be the option and people that are considering it should really seek professional psychological help.
But I'm just a hypocrite, because I tried to kill myself many times and after seeking professional help, I didn't really feel like they did anything except helped some time pass, which probably helped a bit... I am here writing a comment~
The fact is that if euthanasia was an option for me, I would be dead. But because it wasn't, I just spent some time in the psychiatric ward.
Now my goal in life is financial freedom which should keep me busy for a decade or two, especially since I come from zero! (I'm ~3.75% done!)
I'm not a medical professional, actually am not a professional of any kind, so if you're suffering seek proper help, don't let your demons win!
It is weird to me that our society is so fixated on autonomy, self-sufficiency, bootstrapping, competition, and exploitation right up until someone has the desire to exit the whole thing. At that point they get just enough interest from others to keep them alive so they can continue feeding the sick system.
Also, going to another city isn't somehow escaping the system we all live in
A plane ticket is probably one of the more expensive parts of relocating. If suicide has already been contemplated, the person also has the ability to let go of the vast majority of their possessions and condense their must-haves down to 1-2 suitcases.
It seems a bit goofy to me that a person with budgetary constraints in need of fresh air is trying to find a solution in the middle of one of the mostly densely populated and polluted cities in Canada.
Manufactured problem?
Doctors suffer from ethical qualms if they are forced by law to end the life of a depressed person.
In the EU, yes. People changing their mind (crazy or otherwise) being forced to die by ‘polite’ society.
I mean one can similarly cause them pain by just leaving them. There’s no obligation to stay in relationships with people because the counterfactual would be painful, I don’t see why there should be an obligation to live simply because it would be painful for others.
My parents have both told me they would sooner die than go to a nursing home. Knowing them, I believe both that they mean it and that they would be utterly miserable in a nursing home. Obviously I would be distraught if it came to that, but how selfish would I have to be to tell them "no, you must go to this place that you'll hate because of the impact it will have on me if you die"?
I certainly think there should be controls. A waiting period, mandatory psych checkup to validate rationality and sound mind. If those (quite low) bars are cleared though, I don't see any reason that people shouldn't be able to choose to die.
To your second point, doctors don't necessarily need to be the vendors of legalised euthanasia.
A rheumatologist friend of mine once expressed that he is generally supportive of the idea of voluntary euthanasia, but believes this should involve creating some kind of "assisted dying professional" role. Asking doctors to euthanize people creates (as he put it) a kind of conflict of interest; the person who is there to help you live should not be the same person who can, if you choose, help you die.
> I still believe that suicide should never be the option
From the rest of your comment, it sounds like you were facing some form of severe but ultimately temporary problem.
People considering suicide are not necessarily in this same boat, and circumstances make all the difference.
To believe that suicide should "never" be the option suggests that you're only considering a subset of people who are in a similar situation to the one you faced. There are plenty of situations which give a reasonable expectation of permeance, or cause such severe suffering that while possibly temporary may not be worth enduring.
To me it comes down to the freedom to choose, for people of sound mind making a rational decision. I'm young, healthy, and generally happy, but there are absolutely situations which may affect me in the future over which I would prefer death, and I firmly believe I should have the freedom to make that choice if the time ever comes.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiple_chemical_sensitivit...
This is not to say the symptoms are not real and debilitating, but it would be difficult to provide housing which is suitable if the symptoms are not actually correlated with specific chemicals in the environment.