Husband of woman who died by suicide urges MPs to reconsider MAID changes for mental illness

The Story

David Slater says his late wife, Diane McDowell, died by suicide on Oct. 25, and he is urging members of Parliament to reconsider upcoming federal MAID legislation that he says would prevent people with mental illness from accessing MAID when mental illness is the sole underlying condition.

Slater, who has been reviewing photographs of his wife since her death, said McDowell was not eligible for MAID and told him about a month and a half before she died, “I don’t want to die, but I don’t want to live like this.” He said the proposed changes should allow mental illness to be considered as part of eligibility, arguing that MAID could have offered a more dignified end-of-life option.

He said his wife had long managed depression with therapy, medication and travel, but that her condition later shifted to the point where multiple treatment attempts did not help, including transcranial magnetic stimulation, electroconvulsive therapy and ketamine.

According to Slater, depression was part of McDowell’s life before she met him, and she continued to work throughout the periods he described as difficult, including at the litigation firm where she was a founding partner for more than 30 years. He said she retired from the firm in 2012 and that the couple spent winters sailing the Caribbean and summers back in Toronto, before renting an apartment for about three months in the south of France.

Slater said McDowell was on medication for depression until her retirement, when she asked her family doctor to taper off and go without the treatment. He said she became unwell during that period while the couple was on a boat in Grenada, then returned to medication after she told him, “Something is not right.”

After she restarted treatment, Slater said her condition did not improve and described episodes of severe anxiety, including an anxiety attack that sometimes took eight or nine hours to subside. He also said that six months after Grenada, McDowell spent a month in the psychiatric ward at Toronto General Hospital, followed by an additional three months back in a psychiatric ward under close supervision.

Slater said McDowell also attended Homewood Health Centre in Guelph for about nine weeks, adding that “there was no stone left unturned.” He said that during a period when her situation looked poor, she began discussing MAID. “I would have supported her in that. I told her I would,” he said.

In his account, McDowell looked toward other possibilities as well, including the option of going to Switzerland, which has an end-of-life program that receives international applicants, while she feared that asking for MAID in Canada could lead to further hospitalization.

Justice Minister Sean Fraser addressed MAID eligibility for mental illness in late October, and Slater said he is seeking changes that would allow broader access. Fraser said in a public setting on Parliament Hill that he had to make a decision “in the absence of consensus from the medical community,” and said he erred on the side of caution because of the permanence of ending one’s life.

Fraser said he was responding to concerns from many psychiatrists about whether recovery is possible and how it can be determined, and he also referenced people who he said would not be alive today if MAID had been an option. Fraser said policy decisions should avoid “preserve life where possible” while still being sensitive to people facing “extraordinary pain and suffering.”

Fraser said the approach was not “an accounting exercise” and he described hearing from psychiatrists who warned it may be difficult to determine the likelihood of improvement, including when treatments have been tried.

At McDowell’s funeral on Nov. 7, Slater said Liberal MP Robert Oliphant attended. Oliphant co-chaired a parliamentary committee tasked with making recommendations on MAID in 2016, and Slater said Oliphant told him he would “commit once again” to advocating for access to MAID for people with mental illness.

Oliphant said in an interview that he will soon vote on the government’s MAID legislation, saying a vote in favour would close the door on MAID for mental illness while creating the prospect of advance requests for people with dementia and other conditions that take away their capacity to consent. Oliphant added, “Maybe it does take the death of an innocent person to spark us to say, no, we have to help this to not happen to another person.”

Slater said if MAID had been an option, his wife could have been surrounded by family and he could have spoken with her about details such as their favourite late-night stop for ice cream and coffee in Paris. He said he could not have that conversation on her deathbed and called it “wrong,” adding that he believes it “could have been dignified.”