Does the modern world still stand for suicide prevention? Unfortunately, the answer is maybe not.

[Mosby]

Does contemporary civilization still consider suicide an avoidable tragedy? Do our institutions still unequivocally follow this compassionate proposition: Society must help people who are suffering from mental illness and prevent them from taking their own lives?

These questions may seem not only grim but also absurd. Sept. 10 was World Suicide Prevention Day. President Biden’s proposed budget for fiscal 2022 seeks $180 million for suicide prevention, an increase of $78 million over fiscal 2021. On July 16 of next year, those experiencing a suicidal crisis will be able to get help by dialing a federally mandated three-digit phone number, 988.

And yet developments in the country immediately to our north suggest that the norm is indeed weakening.

Last spring, on March 17, Canada passed a law establishing an expert panel to study the extension of euthanasia — the intentional administration of a lethal dose of medication, by a physician — to people who seek it solely to relieve what they say is intolerable suffering due to mental illnesses, such as schizophrenia or bipolar disorder.

The 12-person panel, whose members were officially named in August, has until next March to recommend “protocols, guidance and safeguards to apply to [patients’] requests for medical assistance in dying," which will begin in March 2023 (barring the theoretical but unlikely possibility Parliament reconsiders).

The panel’s task, according to the law, is to ensure that “practitioners are equipped to assess these requests in a safe and compassionate way based on rigorous clinical standards and safeguards that are applied consistently across the country.”

Less than a decade ago the Canadian Parliament passed a law establishing a “federal framework for suicide prevention,” on the grounds that suicide caused by mental illness was a major public health issue — preventing it was "everyone’s responsibility.” Now it has reframed suicide as at least potentially a manifestation of individual autonomy, which doctors might not only respect but facilitate.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/11/16/canada-euthanasia-assisted-suicide-prevention/