In the wake of Canada’s controversial 2021 law expanding access to medical assistance in dying (MAID), Let’s Talk Suicide, the leading suicide prevention lifeline across the thirteen provinces, has announced in a press release that, in addition to talking people out of suicide, crisis responders will also help them expedite it.
“Research shows that failure to affirm the suicidality of suicidal persons can actually make them more suicidal,” the press release notes. It continues: “Prevention can mean different things for different people. Life prevention may be preferable to suicide prevention. Nobody who successfully ends their life regrets it. The opposite isn’t always true.”
According to one Canadian mental health official, “It’s a common misconception that euthanasia (meaning ‘good death’) is reserved only for terminally ill patients seeking relief from unbearable physical pain – death with dignity. Physically healthy individuals experiencing a mental health emergency, or streak of bad luck, are just as deserving of the coup de grâce from their public healthcare system.”
Experts say that suicidal people have long faced discrimination by those who insist their lives have inherent value. However, recent polling shows that family, friends, doctors and lawmakers are coming round to the idea that the harm done to suicide-identified persons by “denying their existence” may outweigh the benefits of helping them remember why life is worth living.
The changes come as the Lifeline faces mounting pressure from activists for its “life bias.” Promising to allocate more resources to suicide assistance – the nation’s fastest growing (and most cost-effective) mental health initiative targeting anybody whose capacity for rational judgment is in doubt – Let’s Talk Suicide will conduct initial screenings of callers to determine if they “really mean it” when they say they want out, or are pleading for help. Accordingly, responders can refer them to a prevention counselor, or Dr. Kevorkian.
