A 37-year-old woman who visited a Vancouver hospital for psychiatric help was instead offered assisted suicide, according to a report from a UK faith-based think tank.
According to the Christian Institute, Kathrin Mentler went to Vancouver General Hospital seeking psychiatric help in the midst of a mental health crisis.
Mentler says that she lives with chronic suicidal thoughts and sought out the hospital’s help to put herself in a position where it would be a lot harder for her to attempt an drug overdose or other self-harming behaviours.
“I didn’t want to get into a situation where I would think about taking an overdose of medication,” said Mentler.
“That day my goal was to keep myself safe. I was thinking of maybe trying to get myself admitted to hospital because I was in crisis.”
Mentler says that she arrived at Vancouver General’s Access and Assessment Centre and was told there weren’t any beds available for her, and that she should expect a long wait before she could see a psychiatrist.
At this point, Mentler says that she was asked if she had ever considered MAID, with the clinician telling Mentler about the “relief” she felt after patients with mental illness had committed suicide through MAID.
Mentler says that the clinician suggesting MAID to her made her feel like her life was “worthless,” and that she was a problem that could be solved with MAID.
The Christian Institute reached out to Vancouver Coastal Health (VCH) who operate the hospital at which Mentler was offered MAID. VCH had apologized for any distress the incident caused, but claimed that suggesting MAID to patients was a matter of procedure to assess the patient’s risk of self-harm.
Currently, it is illegal to deliver MAID to Canadians who are not suffering from a grievous and irremediable medical condition and whose only medical condition is mental illness.
However, cases like Mentler’s have become more of a common occurrence, with several stories of medical staff offering MAID to otherwise healthy Canadians.
Last year, Global News published a report of a Canadian Armed Forces veteran who was inappropriately offered MAID by a Veteran Affairs Canada employee while seeking treatment for a traumatic brain injury and post-traumatic stress disorder.
Despite outrage from Canadians concerned with the ethics of allowing the mentally ill to kill themselves, the Trudeau government has pushed forward with making MAID easier to access for those suffering with mental illness, as on March 17th, 2024, those seeking MAID can be accepted if their only condition is mental illness.
In 2021, a total of 10,064 Canadians died through MAID, representing 3.3% of all Canadian deaths that year.
