Getting Rid of the Undesirables One At a Time

This is where it ends for this country:

You can’t see depression on a scan. With the exception of dementia, where imaging can show structural brain changes, “in psychiatry, really all you have is the patient’s story, and what you see with your eyes and what you hear and what the family tells you,” van Veen says. Most mental disorders lack “prognostic predictability,” which makes determining when psychiatric suffering has become “irremediable,” essentially incurable, particularly challenging. Some say practically impossible. Which is why van Veen says difficult conversations are ahead as Canada moves closer to legalizing doctor-assisted deaths for people with mental illness whose psychological pain has become unbearable to them.

One year from now, in March 2023, Canada will become one of the few nations in the world allowing medical aid in dying, or MAID, for people whose sole underlying condition is depression, bipolar disorder, personality disorders, schizophrenia, PTSD or any other mental affliction. In the Netherlands, MAID for irremediable psychiatric suffering has been regulated by law since 2002, and a new study by van Veen and colleagues underscores just how complicated it can be. How do you define “grievous and irremediable” in psychiatry? Is it possible to conclude, with any certainty or confidence, that a mental illness has no prospect of ever improving? What has been done, what has been tried, and is it enough?

 

Oh, great! 

Now we don't have to step over the mentally ill sleeping on the sidewalks in January!

Way to go, Canada! 

To wit:

According to the Hartheim statistics, a total of 18,269 people were killed in the gas chamber at the Hartheim euthanasia centre in the period of 16 months between May 1940 and 1 September 1941, as follows:

1940 1941 Total killed May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug 633 982 1,449 1,740 1,123 1,400 1,396 947 943 1,178 974 1,123 1,106 1,364 735 1,176 18,269

These statistics only cover the first extermination phase of the Nazi's euthanasia programme, Action T4, which was brought to an end by Hitler's order dated 24 August 1941 after protests by the Roman Catholic Church.

In all it is estimated that a total of 30,000 people were executed at Hartheim. Among those killed were sick and disabled persons as well as prisoners from concentration camps. The killings were carried out by carbon monoxide poisoning.