Until now, medical assistance in dying — or MAID, as it’s often called — has been available in North America primarily to patients with terminal physical illnesses. The introduction of psychiatric MAID will present difficult, and different, ethical questions, especially for the doctors responsible for helping patients through this choice. Dr. Sisco van Veen is a psychiatrist working in the Netherlands, where psychiatric MAID has been legal since 2002. As an ethicist and a clinician at Amsterdam Medical University, Dr. van Veen has thought deeply about the thorny ethics of psychiatric MAID. If you are having thoughts of suicide, call or text 988 to reach the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline or go to SpeakingOfSuicide.com/resources for a list of additional resources.

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