The government’s suicide prevention adviser has said that legalising assisted dying in England and Wales may cause major issues in suicide prevention work if the state effectively concedes that taking one’s own life should be allowed in some circumstances.
Prof Louis Appleby, who chairs the government’s national suicide prevention strategy advisory group, also said he took issue with MPs who said it was offensive to call assisted dying “suicide” – saying that it was wrong to bar the use of that phrase in this context.
In an interview with the Guardian, Appleby said he did not consider himself an avowed opponent of legalising assisted dying, but said it would radically change the long-held consensus that it was right to try to prevent all suicides.
“The suicide prevention consensus is a remarkable thing,” he said. “As society, we are signed up to the idea that we should do all we can to help [suicidal people] get through. It’s very rarely questioned. Society accepts that it has a role in protecting people who are vulnerable and at risk. We look after our friends when they’re in crisis. We sit up all night with them. We look out for strangers on a bridge.
“My concern is that if we decide as a society, if we concede the principle that people who want to take their own lives should be helped through that crisis and out the other side, then conceding that ground is a huge step.”
Appleby said if the bill passed MPs should potentially consider introducing a cooling-off period, as found in some other jurisdictions, once an assisted death has been requested.
He said he had been deeply moved by some of the stories of terminally ill people who wanted the right to an assisted death, but he argued this would open up the possibility of a validated suicide.
“I’m worried once you say some suicides are acceptable, some self-inflicted deaths are understandable and we actually provide the means to facilitate the self-inflicted death,” he said. “That seems to me to be so far removed from what we currently do and from the principle that’s always guided us on on despairing individuals, that it’s just an enormous change with far-reaching implications.”
“It does mean that you start saying certain kinds of suffering are so terrible and so irremediable that we have to support people in this action to take their lives – which in every other sense we would try to prevent.”
The private members’ bill, which is sponsored by the Labour MP Kim Leadbeater and is in the scrutiny stage where a committee of MPs is considering amendments, would restrict assisted dying to terminally ill people with less than six months to live.
Appleby said it was important for MPs to consider the moment at which a terminally ill person might decide to proceed with an assisted death, citing his own analysis on when a terminally ill patient would feel the most suicidal.
“It starts with the shock of diagnosis and that sense of ‘my life’s already over’,” he said. “But if you can get people through that period … that initial reaction seems to level out. Getting through that first period of shock and despair is something that’s possible. We have to be prepared to try to support the people who can get through that initial despair and get into a period of life which is acceptable to them.
“You have a number of potentially remediable risk factors like isolation, for example. Do something about isolation. Depression, treat depression. It should be the offer of supporting people through the remediable elements of a sense of despair.”
MPs will consider further amendments next week when parliament returns, including on whether to replace scrutiny of each case by a high court judge with a panel of experts who would have greater understanding of both domestic violence and mental capacity.
Leadbeater proposed the changes last week and caused a backlash among some MPs who said it was a potential watering down of safeguards. Proponents of the bill say it makes the system more secure by giving each case scrutiny from a senior legal figure, a psychiatrist and a social worker.
Article by:Source: Jessica Elgot Deputy political editor
