GREATER SUDBURY, Ont. — A Sudbury psychiatrist is pleased the federal government decided this week to delay medically assisted death for persons whose sole medical condition is mental illness.
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Dr. Rayudu Koka, a consulting psychiatrist, and medical director of the Mental Health & Addictions Program at Health Sciences North, was commenting on the decision announced Thursday by federal justice minister David Lametti. The MAiD issue (Medical Assistance in Dying) has been pushed back to March 4.
"It was great,” Koka told Sudbury.com in an interview. “That's what we were advocating for because we're not ready. I don't want to push our patients when things are not really clear. So, I want to make sure that people are safe, and their doctors are safe when they're deciding to do this very tough job."
Both Koka and Dr. John Haggarty jointly authored a letter last week calling for a pause in the legislation. Koka and Haggarty are the past and current section chairs of psychiatry at NOSM University. Their letter spoke to concerns about improving suicide prevention initiatives, gaps in MAiD standards, and the definition of irremediability (determining the level of continual suffering).
Koka said when dealing with a physical illness, one can more easily define how serious it is. A physical illness is either going to be fatal or it isn’t, either a person will return to a satisfactory quality of life or they won’t.
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He said that mental illness and how people respond to it are more complex, and often much less black and white.
"It could be just at that time people may feel” their only option is MAiD, Koka said, but protocols and procedures must be in place and robust to determine if a mental illness is truly intractable.
"We need to make sure that they may be getting better. There are different things that can be done," he added.
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With respect to gaps in the standards for MAiD, Koka said there are human resources staffing issues in psychiatry all across Canada. He said it is an issue that psychiatric departments in medical schools across Canada will also have to deal with.
Koka added that the government now has a year to work with the Academic Chairs in Psychiatry of Canada (ACPC) and others to try to find more clearly defined solutions.
"Well, we hope that things will be more clear with regard to definitions and the services and the availability of resources properly, clearly outlined, so that guidance is available for people who have been involved in doing this for the patients as well as the physicians," he said.
"The most important thing is about the patients, to see that they get the proper assistance they need."
Len Gillis covers health care and mining for Sudbury.com.
