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The Current Transcript for April 25, 2016

Host: Anna Maria Tremonti

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Listen to the full episode

Prologue

[Music: Theme]

SOUNDCLIP

Issues like people suffering from mental illness are issues that we have cited in the proposed legislation as requiring further study.

ANNA MARIA TREMONTI: That one line by the Minister of Justice signals the debate within the debate on whether those with mental illness should also have access to physician-assisted death. This is where even many of those in favour of the right to choose with the help of a doctor part company. We’ve been hearing the arguments, we’ve been hearing the concerns. And then, Graeme Bayliss writes his own impassioned plea in The Walrus for the option to one day end his psychological pain with the help of doctor.

SOUNDCLIP

I wouldn't use it now. If it were available to me now, I wouldn't use it. What I would find is that, knowing that there is a way out that is not hideous, and that is not going to be traumatizing for people I love. Knowing that that's there would somehow be a comfort to me, I think.

AMT: At a time when a nation has been shocked and politicians galvanized over a suicide crisis in First Nations communities, when there's a call for better mental health care because of suicides, this man is asking that suicidal people be given help to end their lives. Graeme Bayliss is not alone in insisting his is a view we need to hear. He will make his case in half an hour. And immediately after, a panel of people: a father who's lost a son to suicide, a psychiatrist, and a journalist who covers mental health, will offer their views. And a warning, this is not an easy topic. It’s not really for kids, it’s not for everyone today. It will take up our second and third half hours. But we begin our program with the currency and symbolism of a woman on a bank note.

SOUNDCLIP

We have to remember all of our history: the history of the contributions of men, and the history of the contributions of women. And our great democracy was built by men and women.

AMT: U.S. officials have chosen Harriet Tubman; here at home, a committee is huddling to determine a Canadian choice. The debate over what this means has begun, and we're wading in. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti, this is The Current.

Why having women on currency makes sense

Guests: Viola Thomas, Linda Ambrose, Rinaldo Walcott

SOUNDCLIP

There are a number of reasons why Harriet Tubman being the new face of our 20 dollar note is quite significant.

ANNA MARIA TREMONTI: Talk about making change for a $20 bill. It was big news last week when the U.S. treasury announced that the face of Harriet Tubman will soon grace one of its bank notes. The legendary abolitionist freed American slaves along the Underground Railroad after escaping slavery herself in 1849. Her inclusion on the twenty is thanks in part to the efforts of people such as Barbara Ortiz Howard, who founded the grassroots campaign group Women on 20s. She is thrilled with the choice.

SOUNDCLIP

First and foremost, she represents a new era that we'd like to usher in, one that truly reflects the values that we have of honouring freedom and equality. We’re trying to go from a period of hatred to a period of hope, from a period of divisiveness to a period of reconciliation. So Harriet Tubman is someone who, in fact, is one who can bridge the divides that we have. She is loved in this country by people on all points along the spectrum of political and religious belief. She has something for everyone.

AMT: But as beloved as Harriet Tubman may be, there have been dissenting voices. Some say that putting the image of a former slave on paper currency is an inappropriate attempt at honouring her and confronting history. Well, we're set to hear all sides today because a similar debate is on its way here. This past weekend, a special committee met to whittle down a shortlist of Canadian women who could appear on a new bill. It's part of a Trudeau government promise to get such a bill into circulation by 2018. So right now, I'm joined by three people: Viola Thomas is a band councillor for the Tk'emlups Tesecwepemc First Nation. She joins us from Kamloops, B.C.. Linda Ambrose is a Professor of Canadian History specializing in women's issues and rural women, at Laurentian University. She is in Sudbury, Ontario. And Rinaldo Walcott is Director of Women and Gender Studies Institute at The University of Toronto. He is joins us from Toronto. Hi, everyone, welcome.

LINDA AMBROSE: Right, beyond the queen. Well first of all, I just want to say I’m really thrilled with the process, because this is creating this discussion about women's place in history which usually doesn't-- I don't hear that discussion outside my classrooms very much. So I’m really happy to hear that people are discussing it. But you know, it's one thing to just say, oh really. that happened? There were women in history? That's interesting. Adding them to the history is one thing, but then as soon as we do, what thrills me is that this debate gets complicated right away. It's got to be really nuanced, because no matter which woman we start talking about, there's more than one way to look at her. And although we might admire someone, say, for what they did for getting the vote for women, when we look at it a little deeper, we say, oops, wow, I didn't realize she was racist. I didn't know that she subscribed to these eugenicists views, and so, ooh, I can't support her. So this debate very quickly gets nuanced and complicated. And to me, that's a thrill, because it tells people, look, my discipline history is by no means dead. It's very much alive and really controversial.

AMT: Rinaldo Walcott: is it a good idea, do you have reservations?

RINALDO WALCOTT: I definitely have reservations, and I definitely have reservations as it pertains to putting black women on currency in North America. I think it's really important when we talk about women, that we don't see women as a differentiated category, but we see women as a category that’s imbued with all kinds of differences. So for me, putting black women on currency, given the current conditions on that which black women live in Canada, would be extremely troubling.

AMT: And I’m going to continue to explore that with you, Rinaldo, but let's get to Viola Thomas in the conversation, as well. What are the most important things to consider when selecting someone, Viola?

VIOLA THOMAS: Well I think regardless of race, I think that in Canada, women are, I would concur with the earlier speaker that women historically have not been adequately portrayed in our history books. And I think it's important to share women's truth and their contributions to the country. When I think of Indigenous women, particularly, if it wasn't for Indigenous women, the Hudson's Bay Company probably wouldn’t have flourished. I think Indigenous women have been extremely overlooked in terms of history, particularly in terms of contributions to the country and the building of the country. I know that there were, for example, a lot of women that worked on the railway track. Indigenous women in Northern British Columbia helped found the canneries unions up and down the west coast. So I think it is important, it is critical to acknowledge contributions of women in Canada in the building of the economy, and continue to contribute to the economy.

AMT: Okay, and Rinaldo Walcott, before we talk more about the choice Canadians are facing, I want to ask you about Harriet Tubman on the U.S. $20 bill. Is she the right choice, in your view?

RINALDO WALCOTT: Well I think that placing Tubman on the $20 bill raises the question of what work does it do? And to me, what work I see it doing it is neutering the more radical story of Harriet Tubman means. Not just for people in the U.S., but for people in the black diaspora. And so I’m troubled by the fact that she was selected to be placed on that bill, and to be placed on the bill that represents everything that she fought against.

AMT: Well, I have another view here. Charles "Spider" Jones is on the board of directors of the Ontario Black History Society. He's a descendant of slaves who came to Canada on the Underground Railroad. This is his reaction to the idea that Harriet Tubman might not have wanted to be on that bill.

SOUNDCLIP

I'm not sure if she wouldn't have wanted to be on that. She was an inspiration. Harriet Tubman also had a major ego. You have to have to do it. She wasn't a humble woman. She'd kill you if you got in her way. [laughs] You know, her entire life was dedicated, devoted to freedom of slaves. She wanted that. She was a runaway slave, her husband was a runaway slave.

AMT: So Rinaldo, Spider Jones seems to think she would like this. Help me understand why you're saying that it's too weighted?

RINALDO WALCOTT: Okay, so a couple of things. One is, I won't presume to be able to speak into Harriet Tubman’s head. But one thing that I am pretty sure of is that symbolic forms of representation don't address the kinds of issues that need to be addressed. In fact, these symbolic forms of representation cover up deeper and more sustained issues. So it seems to me that placing Harriet Tubman on the twenty when black people in the U.S. at this particular historical moment are suffering such economic strain-- sorry, such economic such economic distress, is in some ways covering up deeper issues with symbolic forms of representation with piecemeal forms of representation. You know, I take my guidance from the great poet Adrienne Rich. In ‘97, when she refused a national medal for the arts from Bill Clinton, she said, you know, that poets can't be, That the artists can't be celebrated while the people are so disrespected. And that's the way I feel about this form of representation. The Harriet Tubman on the 20 can't be celebrated as the people are living under dire forms of distress.

AMT: Linda Ambrose, what do you think? Can a historical figure be truly reflective of our culture today?

LINDA AMBROSE: Well I just wanted to wade in there and say, you know, I get the argument that says no thank you. You know, that representation doesn't capture it and it's a celebration, it's not nuanced enough. It doesn't say what's happening now, let alone what happened in the past. But you know, I have a friend who teaches at Arkansas State University, an African-American, and she said recently on social media, like last week, she said, you know what, I can't wait to go and stand at the bank counter and say, I'll have my check cashed: I'll take it all in Tubmans, please. You know, it's one thing to say no thank you, and then you-- in that moment, you get to explain why you're declining the offer to have this story told. But if the image appears in every time people change money and make purchases, they say, who is that woman? Wait a minute, Harriet Tubman. Oh I know that story. No, you don't, it's more complicated than that. My point is, let's get these images out there and let's keep this conversation going about the kinds of things that my colleague at U of T is trying to raise there. That if we if we just say, no thank you, then we silence the discussion, I think. But if we have the images there and it's passing through our hands every day, it's a teaching point, it's a talking point where we can say look, you know what, these things are way more complicated than we've imagined in the past. Let's put an Indigenous woman's face on the money, let's put a black Canadian on the money. And let's talk about our past, which is not just a happy story of celebration, it's a really, really complicated story about how this country has always negotiated race and class and gender. And I think that this would be an excellent place to keep that conversation going.

AMT: Viola Thomas, I’m wondering what you think. Do you share some of Rinaldo’s concerns about the history that would kind of, would be missing if we were to see?

VIOLA THOMAS: I think all cultures., whether it's Indigenous or non-Indigenous, have signs of symbolism, and I totally appreciate the concern in terms of, is that a reflection of what's happening with black people today. And you can even apply that to Indigenous people, as well, in terms of the economic distress and marginalization and continued racism. But at the same time, I think it's critical to find windows of opportunity to open up those conversations with Canadians. And I think it's important to have those conversations, whether it starts with the picture on the money bill, I think for too long, the lack of inclusivity of women’s truth continues to be missing to a large degree. Whether it's reflecting the distress and the racism, whether it's reflecting the truth of what Indigenous peoples have gone through as Indigenous women. So I think it's an important opportunity to begin that conversation.

AMT: Would you like to see an Indigenous woman on a Canadian bill, then?

VIOLA THOMAS: Absolutely, I would. I think if we wanted to look at the role that Indigenous women have played historically, not just in terms of the building of the economy, but I think that's an area that is always, in my mind, not adequately portrayed whatsoever. And we've had so many incredible contributions by Indigenous women artists, if you look at someone like Pauline Johnson, who was a poet, she challenged racism through her poetry. She was well known on the west coast. In fact, it was the women in B.C., after she died, who got together to acknowledge her contribution, built a statue in Stanley Park on the west coast. So I think that it is important.

AMT: Linda Ambrose, another thing strikes me. There are five men on Canadian banknotes.

LINDA AMBROSE: Right.

AMT: Former prime ministers. Why are we only talking about one woman?

LINDA AMBROSE: Well, exactly. And you know, on social media, some people been saying, hey, wait, we already have a woman, the Queen is everywhere.

AMT: Okay, well, that will change when the monarchy changes, too.

LINDA AMBROSE: Exactly. We’ll have another man.

AMT: But why are we in Canada only talking about putting one woman, when we have five places that we could use?

LINDA AMBROSE: Right. We have five places, and hundreds of possibilities. When they did the crowdsourcing to suggest to the Bank of Canada which woman, hundreds of ideas came in. So I think it's a start, right? And we’re talking about who's going on the note for 2018, it's not for all time. It's not going to have as long run as the Queen has had herself, but it is a conversation--

AMT: [interposing] Oh, it’s not starting in 2018, it’s just for 2018?

LINDA AMBROSE: Well, it’s starting in 2018.

AMT: Okay.

LINDA AMBROSE: How long will it last, that remains to be seen. But we've got some other major historical moments to mark before that. In 2017, when we come to the 150th celebration of Confederation, right? Will that be only the men? Are we only going to talk the fathers of Confederation for that whole year and beyond? So I think that just getting started is a good idea, and to me, it begs the bigger question. Like, what is history for, anyway? You know, some of us still have our elementary or secondary school notions that history is about memory work, and you've just got to get all the facts straight. That's a start. Let's get some facts straight about women and the fact that they have been participating and playing major roles in the Canadian economy, in the Canadian society, all the way through. Let's get that conversation going. But this isn't just about memorizing something for a test, or knowing, hey, who is that woman, and what's her story? It is about these deeper conversations about how we have negotiated the past, but it's also, what is the purpose of history, anyway? Is it to help us celebrate? Is it to say, well, what a great nation we are. Hey, #2016, we're so inclusive, look at us. You know, this happy sort of sanitized version of the national story. Or history can actually be a way into understanding some really contemporary issues. So I appreciate what Rinaldo is saying about everything that's happening right now with African-Americans and black Canadians and with missing and murdered Indigenous women, the inquiry. Let's use history to talk about these very difficult situations we find ourselves in. Let's not just say, oh, let's clean it up, polish it up. Which women can we all agree to put on the money? The point is, whoever that committee chooses, the debate won't be over: it'll just be starting.

AMT: Rinaldo, should we even be putting people on our money? Like, would you…?

RINALDO WALCOTT: I would prefer that we didn’t. But let me say this. If the five white men and the Queen on the money, we are not already engaging seriously with our history, because every time I see the Queen, I think of transatlantic slavery, I think of colonization, I think of the cycle of colonialism. If we're not already-- if the symbols on the money are not already forcing us to engage with our history, and we have to import black people and people of color and other marginalized people to get us to engage with the mess and the terror of our history, then we've already failed. And that, to me, is the fundamental problem. What work does placing these people on the money do, as a symbol? The work, we have a long history of it. We know what it does. It neuters the story. It actually appears to clean up the story. Because it makes the storm seem as though we have now been included. We see this with the struggle to reclaim a more radical MLK. The ways in which he's now so globally celebrated, that the more radical aspect of his story has been denuded. We see it also with Nelson Mandela. We have a long history of taking important political voices, important inspirations, and neutering them by turning them into symbols. And that's in part what I’m arguing and suggesting. So it's not a question that we don't acknowledge women's roles, and the work that women have done, especially black women and others in creating a more possible place where we can all live and come into ourselves, but it's to look at how these institutions that are not about transformation, but are about the status quo, use these people as symbols to paper over deeper, long entrenched issues.

AMT: Okay, so very briefly, Rinaldo, what's the alternative? What would you rather see them do?

RINALDO WALCOTT: Well, you know, I dream of the utopia of an anti-capitalist, non-capitalist world, so that's the alternative. [laughs]

AMT: So what do you want on that money?

RINALDO WALCOTT: In the meantime, I want on that money symbols like the ones that we have right now, that remind us of the mess and the terribleness that capitalism is.

AMT: Okay, well, okay, but not everyone sees that as the symbol the same way. And just briefly, Viola, what would you want to see?

RINALDO WALCOTT: [interposing] That’s the failure, that’s our failure.

AMT: Okay, fair enough. Viola, briefly?

VIOLA THOMAS: I would like to see something that reflects our [indistinct] as Indigenous women in this country, and our contributions.

AMT: Okay, do you have a name?

VIOLA THOMAS: Pauline Johnson.

AMT: Okay, and Linda? Who or what, briefly?

LINDA AMBROSE: My name: Agnes Macphail, first woman elected to the House of Commons, she's a rural woman, she fought for social justice in cleaning up the Kingston Penitentiary. So she is a woman that I highly admire, and I think that she would be a great choice.

AMT: Okay, we have to leave it there. There's lots to think about as we use that money that we continue to use. Thank you, all of you.

LINDA AMBROSE: Thank you so much.

RINALDO WALCOTT: Thank you.

AMT: That is Viola Thomas, she’s band councillor for British Columbia's Tk'emlups Tesecwepemc First Nation. She joined us from Kamloops. Linda Ambrose is a Professor of Canadian History specializing in women's issues and rural women, at Laurentian University in Sudbury, Ontario. That’s where we reached her. And Rinaldo Walcott is Director of the Women and Gender Studies Institute at The University of Toronto. He joined us from Toronto. Which iconic Canadian females do you think should be on our notes? We have a poll. You can also let us know what you think of this conversation, who do you agree with in that last discussion? Go to the website, cbc.ca/thecurrent, add your suggestions and your thoughts.

An open, 'uncomfortable' conversation on mental health, suicide and doctor-assisted death

Guests: Graeme Bayliss, André Picard, Eric Windeler, Dr. Allison Crawford

AMT: Hello. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti and you're listening to The Current.

[Music: theme]

AMT: We are spending the rest of the program today talking about some of the most uncomfortable questions raised by a doctor-assisted death. And they are raised by some people who want to be covered by the new law but are not. These questions confront the stigma around depression and mental illness and suicide. And a warning, we’ll be talking very openly and honestly about suicide and one man's very real and regular thoughts of taking his own life. If this is something you struggle with, we have posted information about support and crisis help on our web site, cbc.ca/thecurrent. And we will follow this next conversation with three people who have thought a lot about suicide prevention, but first. the tricky business of living and dying with mental illness.

SOUNDCLIP

Razors pain you. Rivers are damp. Acids stain you. And drugs cause cramp. Guns aren’t lawful. Nooses give. Gas smells awful. You might as well live.

AMT: That is Dorothy Parker reading her poem, Resumé, written in 1925. It's a poem that always spoke to Graeme Bayliss. He’s the managing editor of The Walrus, one of Canada's leading literary and current affairs magazines. He's in his mid-20s. He’s also clinically depressed, and he has thoughts about killing himself. And Graeme Bayliss wants the right - should he choose - to do it, he says, peacefully and with dignity. He's written an essay about it in The Walrus, and he begins with the poem we just heard. In the essay, he takes on Canada's proposed new law on doctor-assisted death. He believes the legislation does not go far enough. That it should include provisions for the mentally ill and he makes a provocative argument. Now, I have to say, I have spoken to a few people, all of them seniors, who’ve wanted help to end their own lives because of terminal or advancing degenerative illness. But the idea of speaking a person in his 20s to talk about his desire for suicide was disturbing to me, even before he came into the studio. Doctor-assisted death is an important debate our country is having, and his is a voice that needs to be heard. So he came into our Toronto studio to talk to me last week – and again, a warning that we had a frank talk about mental illness and suicide. Here is my conversation with Graeme Bayliss. Hi.

GRAEME BAYLISS: Hi. Thanks for having me.

AMT: What does that poem say to you?

GRAEME BAYLISS: Well, I guess it does have that sort of sarcastic bite to it, the notion that killing yourself is actually an extraordinarily difficult thing to do. And perhaps even more difficult than living itself can be for someone who is depressed. And it's a poem that I first read actually when was 17, which is when I was first diagnosed with a variety of mental illnesses, including clinical depression, and it sort of stuck with me ever since.

AMT: Can you tell me about your diagnosis?

GRAEME BAYLISS: Yes, so I sort of started feeling what I guess would be considered the symptoms of depression when I was about eleven years old and anxiety as well and obsessive compulsive disorder. Things sort of came to a head when I was 17. That was when I first started to experience suicidal ideation and sort of put into motion plans to kill myself. Luckily, my mother is a psychiatric nurse. She was able to sort of spot the signs, I suppose, which were becoming increasingly apparent, and took me to a hospital where I spoke to a pediatric psychiatrist, and was then sort of put on a round of medications and started doing therapy and that sort of thing.

AMT: Did you end up on medication and long term therapy? What happened?

GRAEME BAYLISS: Both actually. Yes, I started taking Prozac, also known as Fluoxetine, and began to go to therapy with a psychiatrist, which did once a month, increasing or decreasing in regularity depending on how I was feeling. But since then I've gone on a number of different medications, something like dozens, to deal with the various conditions.

AMT: Clinical depression is sometimes described as a never-ending series of small peaks, bottomless valleys. When you have peaks what's that like?

GRAEME BAYLISS: It's hard to say from the perspective of a, quote-unquote, “normal” person on the basis that I haven't been that for a very long time. But I can say that when you're when you're in your small peaks you begin to feel almost how you would imagine a normal person feels on a day to day basis. One of the problems, though, I suppose, and one of the challenges that I have even on good days is that, of course, you very much know that the bad days are coming. So when you're on the peak I guess all you can see ahead of you is valley. It begins to feel almost as if things are pressing in upon you, looking up and seeing the clear blue sky become smaller and smaller in your view until it's a bit of a sliver, with all this sort of greyness pressing in upon you. I think that's how it feels.

AMT: And nothing you can do.

GRAEME BAYLISS: Right. I mean, there are coping mechanisms that all people who are depressed use - some of them techniques suggested by therapists, obviously, there's medication. And there are some that you just sort of come up with on your own. And you sort of come to the understanding that dealing with depression is not a matter of working yourself towards a cure. It's a matter of managing it on a day to day basis.

AMT: Where are you now in that cycle?

GRAEME BAYLISS: It's difficult to say because in the past week I've been sort of heartened by the response to the piece. And yet, I wrote the piece when I was in a bit of a bad way. So, yeah, I think I'm still sort of in one of those valleys. But again, I'm sort of fighting through day to day. For now though, at this moment, I'm okay.

AMT: Was it hard to talk about it?

GRAEME BAYLISS: Yeah. It's extremely hard to talk about it. In fact, so a lot of my good friends even were very surprised by the article, not necessarily because they didn't know that I was depressed, but that they couldn't quite believe that I was so open about it because usually I don't talk too much about this sort of thing, certainly not publicly.

AMT: How do you manage and treat this now?

GRAEME BAYLISS: So, right now, I do have a psychiatrist and I'm on a small variety of medications - antidepressants and so on. So that's basically it really.

AMT: Does any of that help? Do the medications help?

GRAEME BAYLISS: I think the medications do help. I don't think that they-- I mean, certainly they're not a cure, obviously, and certainly they don't preclude me from feeling lows, but certainly I think they make the lows a bit more manageable.

AMT: Why do you think the mentally ill should have access to a doctor-assisted death?

GRAEME BAYLISS: Well, first, it's not for me to say, obviously, whether or not people who have psychotic breaks, which is to say people who actually experience breaks from reality, should have access to this. And obviously, that's something that needs to be looked at by medical professionals and I'm not one of those. But for people who like me, I would contend that having depression, anxiety, OCD-- I am a very much of sound mind. I'm lucid. When I wrote the story even it was written, not while I was sort of hysterically weeping, it was written very clearly. So I guess part of my problem with the mentally ill not having access is that it seems to suggest that all mentally ill people are sort of equally not in their right mind, which is not the case. And this lumping together of mental illness as one sort of massive of derangement is something that I very much object to.

AMT: Okay, well, let's talk about all of this a little more then. In your essay in The Walrus, you say suicide is hard. What do you mean?

GRAEME BAYLISS: Well, I mean, I think it is actually an extremely difficult thing to do. There is a certain survival instinct that all humans have and overcoming that and knowing that you're going to cause your body extreme harm is a difficult sort of hurdle to get over. But also there's the notion of, you know, feeling guilty that a family member or a loved one might come across your lifeless body. It's a terrifying thing. It's very, very scary and the point, I guess, is that it shouldn't be this hard. We should recognize that things like chronic, clinical depression are legitimate illnesses even if they're not quite as visible as certain other degenerative physical diseases. Depressed people who feel that there is no other way out, they've tried everything, they've tried therapy, they've tried medication, et cetera. They want to be able to end their lives with dignity and none of the methods of suicide that are currently available to people will provide them with that dignity. And also none of the methods available right now will help ease the suffering that their family would feel. You know, at least if you have a chance to tell your family, to tell your friends, even if they don't accept your decision, they will at least know that the person that they loved died with a certain dignity and peacefully and under care as opposed to alone.

AMT: And it is the dignity issue—So, because you also say suicide is messy and that's exactly-- You don't want someone to have to come across that.

GRAEME BAYLISS: Exactly.

AMT: Like, family. At the same time, you say suicide is difficult but we've always wanted it to be difficult because we don't want people to take their own lives.

AMT: Yeah. It's not as if I'm suggesting that doctors should advise people to commit suicide. I merely think that it would be a comfort, certainly to me, and I can’t presume to speak for all clinically depressed or suicidal people, but it would be a comfort to me and certainly to some people I've spoken to anyway to know that that option exists, that the option to die with dignity is available, and that our country, our legislation sort of supports the notion that these are serious things, these are serious mental illnesses that deserve to be looked at.

AMT: You know, I'm sitting here talking to you about this. You're young. You're 26?

GRAEME BAYLISS: 26.

AMT: You have a really good job. You're managing editor at The Walrus. Most people would say you've got a lot to live for. What am I not getting? What are we not getting?

BG: Well, this is one of the things that people often say when they find out that someone is depressed. Certainly, it's been said about me. Yeah, I have a quite good job for someone my age and it's exactly the kind of job I've always wanted. But the point is that those are sort of extrinsic to what I feel inside and can only be fixed, I think, from the inside.

AMT: Can you tell me what you feel inside? Is it a sense of hopelessness? Is it a sense of despair?

GRAEME BAYLISS: I would say that it's both a sense of hopelessness and despair. My only qualm about using those words is that they're so vague. Often the words that are used to describe depression, you know, a sense of worthlessness, hopelessness, sorrow, et cetera, but they’re all these vague adjectives that people use that don't really mean anything. And I think the only way I can sort of demonstrate how I feel is showing actions. It would have been very easy to write an article where I said something like, you know, I feel sad all the time. But it's much more likely to make people sit up and listen if you say that you walk down to like one time and took your shoes off on your lunch hour.

AMT: Tell me what happened to you? What did you do that day?

GRAEME BAYLISS: I went to work at the usual time, rolled in around 8:30, I think around 11:00 or 11:30, something like that, I decided to go out for lunch. And then for some reason, I felt impelled to keep walking straight down to the waterfront. And sort of sitting there for a while on a public bench they have there. And I wasn't really doing much, I was just sort of lost in thought sort of staring off at the lake and at the islands and so on. And then I just started to take off my shoes and my coat. I ended up sort of standing very rigidly at the edge of the water wondering if I should sort of jump in and I decided to step back. I put my shoes back on, my coat back on. I went back to the office and to anyone in the office I would have appeared as if I simply went for an extended lunch break.

AMT: And you stepped back because?

GRAEME BAYLISS: That's hard to say. I guess, I stepped back because-- It's such a sort of, again, vague thing to say, but I just felt like it wasn't quite the time. I felt that there was still stuff that I had to do, life stuff. And I did think about, you know, how would my girlfriend respond to this or how would my family respond to this? And those sorts of things can sort of pull at you a bit, they sort of ground you, I guess, and in that case, to the extent that I decided not to.

AMT: You write that you also thought if it didn't work, you'd have to go back to the office and explain.

GRAEME BAYLISS: That's right. And that, again, is like one of those things that, I guess, simple embarrassment, humiliation. But if you're a depressed or extremely anxious person, those feelings are often amplified such that it would have been just unthinkable for me to have to go back to the office and explain, you know, why I was suddenly covered in water.

AMT: You know, Graeme, I have to admit to you. I’ll talk to people about almost anything on the radio because I think it's important to hear what people go through so that we can learn from them, but I am uncomfortable with this conversation. I'm afraid that-- I want to respect what you're saying, obviously. I'm afraid that someone who's very impressionable will listen to you and use what you're saying as an excuse to take their life. I don't know how to react to what you're saying.

GRAEME BAYLISS: Yes, I don't-- I've had that a lot. A lot of people have told me that they actually don't quite know what to do with what I've written. And it's certainly-- I mean, it's absolutely not my intention to give anyone an excuse. And before publishing the article, this was one of the discussions that we had was the extent to which this could in fact influence someone who is depressed to take their own life. But we had to make a call and in writing this I decided that I needed to be extremely open, not graphic, but certainly not euphemistic. Because the idea is that we have to let people know that suicide is a very serious thing. It's not a romantic thing. It's an ugly, hideous thing and. I just really wanted to get people talking about it.

AMT: Again, I don't want to be disrespectful, because I think what you're writing and what you're saying comes from a place where you feel that people with legitimate and well documented and illnesses that are very difficult to live with also want to be included into this legislation. Why we find it so difficult to talk about this one kind of death? I guess, for lots of reasons because so many of us fear this one kind of death.

GRAEME BAYLISS: Yeah.

AMT: Do you fear it?

GRAEME BAYLISS: Yes. It's a terrifying thing. Again, it's getting over that hurdle of that instinct to survive. I mean, I fear pain as much as anyone else does. It's just a question of weighing one kind of pain - the physical - against another kind of pain, which is the emotional, the sort of unlifting pain that depression often leaves you with. Suicide remains a sort of taboo topic. It's still something that we speak about euphemistically. It's still something that the news doesn't like to report on. And it's still something that in many ways in literature and movies and so forth is romanticized, which is not true. It's grisly and horrible. But it is very much something that needs to be talked about.

AMT: Do you know, years ago a woman called me. Her son had killed himself and I used the phrase ‘committed suicide.’ And she was upset with me. She actually wrote to me and I called her. And she asked me not to say committed, because committed means commit a crime and we blame people for an illness [indecipherable] and since that day I have rarely used—Like, I've only slipped, if I've used the word committed. I don't use the word. But we have a whole language and we keep changing the language. But, you know, I have to tell you, I'm getting very emotional even talking about this. I've never met you before and I'm sitting here talking to you about maybe wanting to do this and my instinct is to try to talk you out of it, which I know, that's not what you do when we're talking about a real illness. It's not a whim…

GRAEME BAYLISS: Yeah, exactly.

AMT: …you happen to have as you walked into the studio.

GRAEME BAYLISS: Exactly. It's not as if you just have a bad day at work and decide that that's the end. It's interesting that you bring up the idea of committing a crime. There's been a lot of talk recently about the language we use when we talk about cancer and how we shouldn't say, you know, ‘he lost his battle with cancer.’

AMT: That's right. As if the person who didn't who died because of cancer somehow didn't fight hard enough.

GRAEME BAYLISS: Exactly.

AMT: As if it was their fault, they didn’t fight enough. I know. I don't like that either.

GRAEME BAYLISS: And for the same reason, yes, we shouldn't say ‘committed suicide.’ But one of the things that people talk about when they talk about suicide is the idea that it's cowardly. And that bothers me a lot. Because as I've said suicide, is a terrifying thing to sort of commend yourself to nothingness is one of the most terrifying things I can possibly imagine. So the idea that it's cowardly to do that is, I think, extremely insulting and short-sighted.

AMT: So what should we take from what you're telling us?

GRAEME BAYLISS: I guess, when I wrote the article I didn't write it wanting to preach to people, even though I did argue a point. And so I guess the only thing I would want listeners to take from this is that suicide is something we need to keep talking about, we need to keep talking about it openly with this sort of brutal honesty and we need to allow people who are chronically depressed and who are suicidal and who have tried everything, we need to do to give them the agency to decide that they no longer wish to continue.

AMT: Do you think your family would ever agree to that?

GRAEME BAYLISS: No. I don't think there's any way that my family would approve of any decision like that.

AMT: Do you think you could find doctors who would sign off on that?

GRAEME BAYLISS: Hmm.

AMT: If they had the legal ability to do that?

GRAEME BAYLISS: In my case?

AMT: Mm hmm.

GRAEME BAYLISS: I'm not sure. Maybe I haven't known enough doctors. Certainly, I would say my current doctor would not. But…

AMT: Would you use it, do you think?

GRAEME BAYLISS: That's such a difficult question. I wouldn't use it now. If it were available to me now, I wouldn't use it. What I would find is that knowing that it's there is, in a strange way, a comfort, knowing that there is a way out that is not hideous and that is not necessarily going to be traumatizing for people I love. Knowing that that's there would somehow be a comfort to me, I think.

AMT: So in a way, you're telling me that if it was there and you knew that there was a way out that was in, as you put it, dignified and without pain you might actually hang on because you knew you could do that if you really felt you needed to as opposed to do something that was more horrific for all concerned.

GRAEME BAYLISS: Yeah. I know it sounds like a bit of a catch-22, but I think that that is true and I think certainly if the legislation were to be passed in favour of allowing the mentally ill to kill themselves, that that would be something I would have to think very, very long and very hard about. It's not a snap decision that I would make.

AMT: Have you talked about this with your girlfriend, with the people who care about you, your family?

GRAEME BAYLISS: My girlfriend knows that I'm suicidal, yes. And my family knows as well. I don't believe my family have read the article yet. My girlfriend has.

AMT: And?

GRAEME BAYLISS: It's strange. She's obviously very upset by it, as anyone would be, but she's also been extremely supportive. She's told me that she's very proud of me for having written it, the word brave is tossed around a lot, I guess. That's been that's been sort of nice to get her support.

AMT: You know, we're having this conversation in the midst of news of a suicide crisis in First Nations communities –Attawapiskat is not the only one.

GRAEME BAYLISS: Yes.

AMT: Should they have that right?

GRAEME BAYLISS: Well, what I would wonder is whether or not they have had access to therapy or to medication. Presumably, they have nowhere near the level of free access that we have in a big city like Toronto. And, again, the idea is not to prescribe suicide as a sort of solution. The idea is to try everything else first.

AMT: And at the age of 26, do you think you've tried everything else? Or is it too much to think about trying everything else?

GRAEME BAYLISS: Well, there are both parts of it. I do think I've tried a lot since being diagnosed nine years ago. But maybe there are, certainly, I think, other things that I can do. There are probably other medications that I can try. There are other types of therapy that I haven't tried yet and could do. And those are certainly things that I very much intend to explore.

AMT: Do you think about your future? Do you have goals for when you're 40, 50? Do you think about that kind of thing or do you not?

GRAEME BAYLISS: I've never thought that far ahead. I’ve thought about where I might be when I'm 30. But I don't think I've ever quite gotten to 40 or 50.

AMT: There's a lot of stigma attached to mental illness.

GRAEME BAYLISS: Yes.

AMT: Do you feel it?

GRAEME BAYLISS: I'm worried about it right now. Yeah. The stigma about mental illness, I mean, it has been improving. People are certainly more willing to talk about it, but one of the things that has struck me is that a huge number of people – this sounds weirdly boastful - but a huge number of people have called the article, or me for writing it, brave or courageous, et cetera. And maybe we should get to a point where it's not actually brave to talk about, what is essentially an illness that is not, you know, it's not some my fault for having it. It would be good if we could get to a point where it was not actually such a bizarre thing to talk so openly about this.

AMT: So if they changed doctor-assisted death legislation to include the mentally ill, what would that mean for you?

GRAEME BAYLISS: It would mean that when I've decided or if I decide that I have tried everything that there's a way out for me that is dignified and comfortable.

AMT: But maybe you won't choose that way?

GRAEME BAYLISS: That's right.

AMT: I hope you don't.

GRAEME BAYLISS: Thanks.

AMT: Thanks for talking to me.

GRAEME BAYLISS: Thank you very much for having me.

AMT: That is Graeme Bayliss. He’s managing editor of The Walrus magazine. He is clinically depressed. He wants the federal government to extend doctor-assisted death to people with mental illness under some circumstances. We will link his essay on our website, cbc.ca/thecurrent. If you feel like you need help, we've also posted links there to suicide crisis support and prevention resources. I met Graeme Bayliss last week and we recorded the interview you just heard. I have not been able to stop thinking about it since. I speak to a lot of people every day about very difficult subjects but I haven't spoken to anyone so candidly and openly about their innermost thoughts and fears about their options for their own suicide. It is the kind of conversation many of us shy away from, certainly with an open mic. On a personal level, it is uncomfortable, it is upsetting, and we steer away from it in the media because we worry about triggering someone who might be vulnerable. But Graeme Bayliss wants to change that. He came in to talk to me, he wrote about it in The Walrus, where he's managing editor, and if you missed the conversation in our last half hour, this is why it is important to him.

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GRAEME BAYLISS: It is absolutely not my intention to give anyone an excuse to take their own life and before publishing the article, this was sort of one of the discussions that we had, was the extent to which this could in fact influence someone who is depressed to take their own life. But we had to make a call and in writing this, I decided that I needed to be extremely open, not graphic but certainly not euphemistic because the idea is that we have to let people know that suicide is a very serious thing. It's not a romantic thing. It's an ugly, hideous thing and I just really wanted to get people talking about it.

AMT: So, Graeme Bayliss wants to start a national conversation and I will mention again if you are listening and you feel that you need help there are crisis and support services across this country. We have posted links to some of them on our website cbc.ca/thecurrent. After hearing him we thought it would be important to have a wider conversation on the issues he raises and so I have three people who have been listening in. André Picard is a health columnist with the Globe and Mail, he's also a contributor to MindSet, reporting on mental health, which is a guide. He is in our Montreal studio. Eric Windeler’s 18-year-old son, Jack, took his own life in 2010 while he was a university student. Mr. Windeler is now the founder and executive director of jack.org, a national network of youth trying to change the way we talk about mental health. Dr. Allison Crawford is a psychiatrist at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, CAMH. She's also the medical director of its northern psychiatric outreach program and telepsychiatry. Both Eric Windeler and Allison Crawford are with me in our Toronto studio. Hello, everyone. Welcome.

GUESTS: Good morning. Good to be here.

AMT: It's good to have you here. I have to say at one point, Eric, you and I locked eyes across the table, this is a hard conversation to listen to and again, I have to say what I actually said to Graeme, I once had a conversation with a woman in her 70s who I knew was going to get on a plane the next day and go to Geneva because of a terminal illness, and I was grateful for the conversation that we had and I knew what she was going to do. This one is about an option, but it was profoundly disturbing to have this conversation with someone who is 26-years old and I'm just wondering, Eric, what you were thinking as you listened to what he said.

ERIC WINDELER: Well, it's quite remarkable. Of course, I had read his piece in The Walrus over the weekend and, first of all, I want to make sure that we understand that the pain associated with psychological suffering is absolutely real and we shouldn't in anyway, anywhere, belittle that; that's vitally important for everybody to understand. Having said that, as a father of someone who picked up a telephone and it was a police officer and then spending my last, pretty much every waking hour, as an advocate for youth mental health, where I sit is I can't agree with his position at this stage, at this stage of the discussion about physician assisted death. We can explain that, or I can explain that as we go forward.

AMT: Okay, Allison let me just get your initial thoughts as you listened.

ALLISON CRAWFORD: Well, I too was struck by his suffering and I think depression, much like something like physical pain, can be very subjective, and to me that is what is important about what Graeme Bayliss is articulating, that he's putting that suffering into words and making it a bit more accessible. But, I also hear something that's very common in depression; that it can colour people’s thinking, it can make them vulnerable to thoughts of suicide, and also the ambivalence that he expressed, you know, even in the episode he describes about going to the lake, that he holds both choices in his hands, to stay alive and end his life. It makes me, especially as a clinician, I think what can we do to come down on the other side of the ambivalence? Are we doing enough to make people want to live, are we addressing people who have thoughts about ending their life, or who've attempted suicide? I think that's what comes through for me.

AMT: André Picard, what struck you about that conversation?

ANDRE PICARD: Well, I thought the really important point he made is that we need to talk about suicide openly, talk about it differently. You know for centuries we treated mental illness and suicide as something shameful and blameworthy and even criminal. You talked about the word committed because it was for, a long time, a crime to try and take your life. So, I thought that point was really important and as a journalist, I think he's done something really important, he's written about this in a really thoughtful way and in a provocative way that is spurring conversations like this and making us think differently. Now on the issue of assisted death, I think that's a very small element of this much larger question which I know we'll get into.

AMT: Okay, Eric, pick up because you want to explain a little bit more about what you were thinking.

ERIC WINDELER: I'll pick up a little bit on the language and just how it affected me. You can imagine, you know we're a family, I'm a father and also with jack.org, but first and foremost a father. And when I started reading all this in the news, I'm thinking back three, four, five months, the language wasn't nearly where it is today. It was all about physician assisted suicide and even Graeme uses some terms that I'm not that happy with in his article. I couldn't engage in it until the language became correct in my mind and physician assisted death suddenly started making me think about my elderly father who passed away a couple years ago, my mother is 89, I think of my mother- in-law who is living with dementia and I want to really be clear about the difference for everybody out there who hasn't read C-14, who doesn't spend their days thinking about this, these are two very, very different things. One is, it is planned, it's considered, it's got some support from third parties and professionals, and it's inclusive of family and so on. And one is usually happening when the person is alone, it can be quite impulsive and it is devastating to not only the family, but the community that that person lived in. Somebody in my place, my son Jack’s place, who we never even knew was struggling, he wasn't talking to anybody. I don't think he would have been you know, he wasn’t talking to his doctor, or his residence don, he certainly wasn't talking to us about how he's feeling so I don't think he would have been seeking out this sort of help even if he knew it was there, so these are very different things and our focus is all about keeping young people alive and helping them through recovery. Numerous, thousands of people in our youth network have made multiple suicide attempts and then they've received support and now they've recovered, largely, and they will have tough times, but they are hopeful. They've regained that hope and they'll live long, productive lives.

AMT: And now they talk about it?

ERIC WINDELER: Absolutely. They talk about it and arguably many of them have been in much tougher situations than even Graeme, not to minimize what he's going through.

AMT: And so, I have a few questions about that. As a parent who has gone through this, what kind of conversations would you have liked to been able to have? Because if someone is hiding something, how do you get them to talk about it? What do you tell people now?

ERIC WINDELER: We give talks all over the country. Most of them are to young people by our young trained speakers because that peer to peer contact based education is critical. But we also give talks to parents and obviously, I've talked to an awful lot of parents. It's critical to start the conversation earlier and go much deeper into the conversation in the right way. We were having what I would say, very average conversations with Jack about how he was feeling, what was going on, but we didn't find the right time and place to go a little bit deeper, and we certainly didn't start early enough and early can be 10, 12, 14, 16. We know that this transition time that Jack got caught up in high school to whatever comes next is one of the most traumatic, and dangerous, and exciting times of your life, but you need to be having those conversations well in advance.

AMT: Allison Crawford, as a physician, how do you go about having a truly open conversation about mental illness and suicide with someone?

ALLISON CRAWFORD: Well, I think a lot of it's also about listening and there's a lot of training in suicide prevention that helps; can guide people to listen properly for those signs, you know, that ambivalence about living, the pain. Even if somebody’s behavior changes, if they're isolating themselves more, so I think there is training even for, not just mental health professionals, but lay people to help recognize those signs and words to have the conversation. To me, it starts with listening. Of course professionally we get a lot of training and as we're training, a lot of supervision and how to have those conversations.

AMT: And what do you make of what he says then, the idea that this is a messy thing and it's traumatic for people who find a person, and it's traumatic to get the phone call, and it would be a nicer thing in, I mean I'm paraphrasing here, but it would be better for people to surround someone the way that you that it is believed you can do with doctor assisted death with someone with a terminal illness. What do you make of that argument?

ALLISON CRAWFORD: Well, a few things. Of course, suicide affects everybody around the person and is traumatic and continues to affect people throughout their lives. That doesn't necessarily mean that physician assisted dying for somebody who wants suicide is the right approach. I think the government has clearly taken more time to consult around those issues. It's not currently included in the proposed legislation, and I think there is a complexity to that. We can also look to other jurisdictions that allow physician assisted dying for people with mental illness, and in fact, there's not a lot of literature but what there is shows that many people who choose that are socially isolated, so they're not the people necessarily who have families surrounding them. They are quite separate issues, and I personally don't think that physician assisted death is the solution to the pain caused by suicide.

AMT: And if we talk about just the ability to talk about this more with people who are in this pain so-- you talk about that ambivalence in wanting to help them come on the side of the choice to live, what's the role in the wider public conversation, like we're having one here on the air today. We really thought about this, you know, how do we have this conversation? It's not an instance where we've asked you to come in and listen with me and then talk about it. We can't just leave that conversation with him hanging. What role does the media play in all of this?

ERIC WINDELER: Well, my view is it's critical to have these conversations. That ties back a little bit to the language so we're inviting people into that conversation and not sort of repelling people. I think it's critical that everybody be involved in these conversations, not just families who are dealing with somebody with a mental illness, for example. We call that the five and five approach where we all have mental health, we all need to take care of how we deal with it and learn how to support those who are struggling and if those are ourselves, than to learn how to reach out for supports. Saturday night, in anticipation of this, we talked about this issue with friends over dinner and for an hour and that's an example of how talking about it makes a subject so much more accessible. We all had our stories about our parents and so on and I think it's going to get everybody thinking about those end of life stages and to the way André writes about it in some of his pieces, and get your things in order, not just about your investments and so on, but how your end of life should be treated when that time comes. To me that's so different than the talk about young people and suicide, different topic.

AMT: André, talk to us a little bit about how you approach covering suicide.

ANDRE PICARD: I think it's important to cover it like other things, to cover it thoughtfully. What's always bothered me about writing about suicide is how we have these special rules. We don't cover that because it makes us uncomfortable, you know there are taboos or religious reasons, and I think we've, in large part, dispensed with those and I think that's a good thing, but now we're struggling with how do we have that normal conversation about something that not, and shouldn't be, normal. So, we have to recognize--I think Dr. Crawford said it very well, we have to distinguish between many issues that were brought up in that interview. You know, it's really important to say there's this epidemic of suicide, that's a bad thing, we need to have better treatment, we have to have better conversations in the media, at our kitchen tables, everywhere, and then there's the conversation, the really, really marginal conversation about which people with mental illness should be able to ask for assisted death. That's a very small fraction of this larger, more important conversation, I think. Our role in the media is not to conflate all this stuff and we tend to do that a lot, we tend to do these blanket stories and we don't get into the subtleties, so I guess what I have the luxury of doing when I write my column is to explore the subtleties, very small issues, one at a time.

AMT: Allison Crawford, is there the fear that by covering suicide, we will create copycat problems? Is that a warranted fear?

ALLISON CRAWFORD: Oh absolutely, and I think that's the caution in all of this. There are ways to have these conversations and this is obviously being done in a very thoughtful way, but there's quite a bit of evidence to show that the way suicide is reported on in the media has a direct impact on the amount of suicide in a society. One of the biggest studies was in Austria, where there were a number of subway deaths, and those rose and rose because they were being portrayed in a very sensationalistic way, they were portrayed as common, and when that stopped in the country, suicide went down, and in regions where there was a paper still publishing in a very sensational way, they remained elevated. So, we have actually very concrete evidence, and there are guidelines about how to talk about suicide as I'm sure you know. I don't think we have the answer about how to agree about frank conversations, but I don't think we have the answer about how to talk about it in a way that doesn't cause harm. We have to tread carefully.

AMT: Eric, do you want to weigh in?

ERIC WINDELER: Well, the conversations have to be with good language and have to be open. They have to be with the family, they have to be with the physician, and perhaps even most importantly for young people with each other. We're just seeing how that's changing the way young people think about mental health and let's face it, they're the ones that parents care about the most, they are our next workers and taxpayers and people who will influence policies and legislation like this. That's why we want to bring them into the conversation, to have a sit at the table.

ALLISON CRAWFORD: It made me realize what you were just saying, that maybe I wasn't clear. I'm also thinking about media stories, you know the conversations that you're referencing are real conversations where there's another person there to listen. Often people who are vulnerable, if they were just to encounter something in the media, it wouldn't really be a conversation.

AMT: I want to ask a little more about the issue that motivated this conversation. Allison Crawford, so Graeme Bayliss makes the argument he's been treated for years for clinical depression and he should have access to physician assisted death if he gets to the point where he can't tolerate this. But I did ask him, have you really had years of that? Talk to us a little bit about the way that you work with people in order to give them hope.

ALLISON CRAWFORD: That's a central part of, I think for most people being a physician and certainly in psychiatry recovery oriented care, means keeping that hope alive, taking people where they're at, and also having at times a realistic view of what it means to live with a mental illness that can be chronic, even if it is episodic, and helping people learn skills to deal with that and live a full life. Graeme Bayliss talked about that even when he feels well, he has this kind of window where he knows what's coming. He can't fully enjoy those moments where he's well. So, helping people live with mental illness, not just looking for a cure, and also, at the same time, not minimizing the suffering that people can have while they're doing that.

AMT: Eric, when I asked him, do you think you had all that treatment, you kind of like went, there's no way at age 26 you've had all the options.

ERIC WINDELER: Right. I've just seen too many Graemes come through the other side, and like you say, not necessarily have a perfect day every day, but definitely want to be living, want to be here, want to have families, and want to carry on living. Life isn't always a bucket of roses, we all sort of are on this continuum when it comes to our mental health. Graeme is definitely kind of in the red zone, and I totally acknowledge that, but I think he's got a lot to live for and so do most young people. So as it applies to this consideration for physician assisted death, for the mentally ill, maybe we'll get there one day, but it is a really contentious issue that I don't think we should rush into here in Canada. Other jurisdictions are there, but it's very infrequent and it is in very specified cases that are, I would say, much, much different than Graeme's situation.

AMT: André, he just made a really good point because at the very beginning, Eric said he does want to really make sure that we acknowledge that this kind of pain is very real. But, he just said he's seen a lot of Graemes come through the other side.

ANDRE PICARD: Well, and I agree with him and I've written about many Graemes over the years. My concern is I don't think a blanket ban saying the mentally ill should not be available, it should not have this law available to them, I think that's wrong. I think that minimizes the fact that the pain is real, that this is a real disease, but I think we have to remember the criteria - grievous and an irremediable suffering. And if you're in that category, you should be eligible regardless of your illness because we want to and it's important to say that mental illness is as legitimate as any other disease that can be as painful and hurtful as cancer and that's the reality. But, as Eric said, and it's very important, we don't want people to make that request. I don't want Graeme to make this request for assisted death and I don't want it to be granted to him, but I want him to have that right and those are different things. We should do everything in our power to help young people, especially young people, but not close the door entirely. There are going to be, again as Eric said, very unusual, specific cases where this is appropriate and that should be available to people. It's important to make that distinction. It's a hard one, it's not a contradiction to want to prevent suicide and to support the right to assisted death. I think they're both legitimate positions, they are not contradictory.

ERIC WINDELER: I see where you're coming from there, André. I still feel for young people, and young people beyond our age demographic, which is 15 to 24, but probably later until 30, when you're still formulating yourself as an adult. I think it's very dangerous to go there, personally, and I think there is so much opportunity to get through their later stages in life is where I would start those discussions, and I suspect there will be lots of discussions at the parliamentary level to consider these things.

AMT: Allison Crawford, what do you think?

ALLISON CRAWFORD: I think it's also important to say that people with mental illness aren't excluded from the proposed legislation if they do have an illness that's deemed irremediable. So, for example someone with depression and ALS would not be excluded from the legislation, but the conversation about when mental illness becomes irremediable or untreatable, I think is a long conversation that's needed. The recovery orientation that most of us has makes that a difficult conversation, and one that I'm glad we're not rushing into.

AMT: Eric, can you tell us a little bit more about the conversations that you do have through jack.org?

ERIC WINDELER: Sure, briefly we've been around six years. We are a youth-led organization, so we have now about 3,000 young people involved in our programs, high school, college, and university across the country, and we allow them through our national summit program, our jack chapters programs, around 85 schools and campuses across Canada. We have about 50 trained young speakers. And it is, to Allison's point, a very hopeful, recovery based, opening up of the discussion, young people to young people, and connecting them to resources. What we're seeing is the evidence is that more people are asking for support, and more people are learning how to be open about this, and we're seeing it resonate back to their community and that's vitally important because let's remember, suicide is the single leading health-related cause of death for young people. Even once we have this law in place, suicide will outnumber physician assisted death by a factor of ten to one, as we've seen in other jurisdictions. So, we really need to keep that conversation going.

AMT: André, how would you like to see the conversation about suicide and suicidal tendencies evolve?

ANDRE PICARD: I think the way it's been evolving, to talk about the underlying causes, that this is often driven by mental illness, but there are other social determinants when we see things like Attawapsikat. Why is there a suicide crisis there? It's because of the social triggers, etcetera, the failings of society. So, I think that's where I'd like the conversation to go. It's really interesting to have this one conversation about a particular person and their thoughts about assisted death, but the much larger issue about how can society react better, do a better job of preventing suicide, especially in young people, is really where the focus has to be.

AMT: Okay, well we have to leave it there. Thank you, all of you, for being part of this conversation.

GUESTS: Thank you.

AMT: I've been speaking with André Picard, health columnist with the Globe and Mail. He's in our Montreal studio. Eric Windeler is the founder and executive director of Jack.org, a national network of youth trying to change the way we talk about mental health, and to help the end the stigma around it. Dr. Allison Crawford is a psychiatrist at The Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, CAMH, and the medical director of its northern psychiatric outreach program and telepsychiatry. They were both with me in our Toronto studio. If you want to comment on what you're hearing today, if you want to see the conversation about suicide change, if you want to weigh in on whether some with mental illness should have access to physician-assisted death, visit our website and click on contact. Cbc.ca/thecurrent, click on the contact link. You can send us an email directly from that site. You can find us on facebook, on twitter. We are @thecurrentcbc If you're struggling and need help we have information on our site, cbc.ca/thecurrent about crisis and support services. That is our program for today. Thank you for listening. I’m Anna Maria Tremonti.

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Apr. 25, 2016 Full Episode Transcript

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