David Slater says his wife Diane McDowell, who died by suicide on Oct. 25, was ineligible for MAID and that proposed changes would bar people with mental illness from accessing it as a sole underlying condition.
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David Slater says his wife, Diane McDowell, died by suicide on Oct. 25, and he is urging members of Parliament to reconsider government changes to medically assisted death (MAID) for people with mental illness.
Slater said McDowell had sought MAID but was not eligible, and he wants MPs to weigh the consequences of new legislation introduced by Justice Minister Sean Fraser in late October.
Slater said the proposed approach would ban people with mental illness as a sole underlying condition from accessing MAID if passed into law in the coming months.
Fraser said the policy decision had to be made in the absence of consensus from the medical community, and he said he erred on the side of caution because MAID is a permanent decision to end one’s life.
He said he was heeding concerns from many psychiatrists who told him there is no way to reliably determine whether someone could recover with the right treatment.
Fraser said he spoke with people who would not be alive today if MAID had been an option and described them as happy to still be here.
He said he was also responding to people’s concerns and that the decision was not an “accounting exercise” weighing fatal stakes, adding that he is not “blind to the struggle” of people living with mental illness.
Fraser described becoming visibly emotional as he spoke about a close childhood friend he lost weeks earlier after a more than 20-year battle with mental illness, and he said MAID was not part of his friend’s story.
The evidence also includes the view of some experts, who warned that restricting access to MAID for mental illness would lead to people dying by suicide rather than dying surrounded by family on their own terms.
Slater described McDowell’s depression beginning in her early thirties, which he said she managed for decades with therapy, medication and travel, including time in Toronto, sailing in the Caribbean, and winters in the Caribbean.
He said McDowell retired from her litigation firm in 2012 and that, in later years, she began tapering off her depression medication after asking her family doctor to do so.
Slater said that while they were on a boat in Grenada, McDowell told him she needed to go home because “something is not right,” and he said she went immediately back on medication.
He said treatments tried in later years included transcranial magnetic stimulation, electroconvulsive therapy and ketamine, and he described the illness as worsening “like a ton of bricks.”
Slater said McDowell spent time in hospital, including six months after Grenada when she was in a psychiatric ward at Toronto General Hospital, followed by additional supervised time in another psychiatric ward and about nine weeks at Homewood Health Centre in Guelph.
He said they had discussed MAID when her situation looked poor and that he would have supported her, adding that McDowell knew she was not eligible and was not hopeful that would change soon.
Slater said their funeral took place Nov. 7, and he said Liberal MP Robert Oliphant, who co-chaired a parliamentary committee tasked with making MAID recommendations in 2016, spoke at the funeral.
Oliphant said in an interview that McDowell’s death makes the issue “personal” for him and that he would commit again to pushing for fair and rightful access to MAID for people with mental illness.
Slater said if MAID had been an option, his wife could have died surrounded by family and that he wanted a chance to speak with her about future plans.
He said McDowell’s death prevented them from having those conversations and described it as not “dignified.”
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