Psychiatrists: ‘Leadbeater Bill undermines suicide prevention’

Kim Leadbeater’s proposals will undermine suicide prevention work across the UK, a group of psychiatrists have warned.

In a letter to The Times, two dozen experts in the field expressed alarm at the “haste” of the committee considering the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill and said the plans will put vulnerable people at risk.

The Bill would allow those in England and Wales diagnosed as terminally ill, and deemed to have less than six months to live, to receive help to kill themselves.

Vulnerabilities

The experts, including psychiatrists Professor Jonathan Cavanagh, Professor Alan Thomas and Dr Agnes Ayton, said: “Those who have suicidal thoughts at any time in life may be vulnerable to pressures to take their own life by the introduction of doctor-assisted suicide.”

Vulnerability, they argued, could arise due to whole host of factors, including lack of palliative care, coercion, a major depressive disorder or “a sense of burdensomeness”.

“Understanding and responding to these vulnerabilities”, the signatories said, “is at the centre of suicide prevention”, and they called for the Bill to be “overwhelmingly rejected”.

Dr Gordon Macdonald of Care Not Killing said the letter “highlights serious concerns from some of the UK’s most senior and respected psychiatrists who feel their profession has been ignored in this process”.

Oral evidence received by the bill committee has not only been rushed but some of it has also been misleading.

‘Rushed and misleading’

In a follow-up letter to The Times, bioethicist Professor David Albert Jones echoed the psychiatrists’ concerns, adding: “Oral evidence received by the bill committee has not only been rushed but some of it has also been misleading.

“For example, Alex Greenwich (not a doctor but an Australian MP) stated three times that ‘voluntary assisted dying’ in New South Wales functions as a ‘form of suicide prevention’.”

However, Prof Jones pointed out that since a change in the law, “suicide in New South Wales has increased by 2 per cent and among those aged over 65 it has increased by 11 per cent.

“This data is in line with earlier studies from Victoria and from other jurisdictions in other countries. The Australian evidence is not reassuring. Legalising assisted suicide does not reduce — and can encourage — non-assisted suicides.”

Opposition

Last week, the committee scrutinising the Leadbeater Bill heard from Professor Meredith Blake, a law professor at the University of Western Australia, who was asked by Sean Woodcock MP whether it concerned her that a large proportion of people who asked for assisted suicide cited “being a burden” as their reason.

Blake dismissed the evidence, stating: “There are people who feel that they are a burden. People can feel that they are a burden, and that is part of their autonomous thinking.”

Dame Meg Hillier MP has drafted an amendment to the assisted suicide Bill proposing that those seeking help to kill themselves should be interviewed by a psychiatrist to establish whether there is “any evidence of duress or coercion”.

But psychiatrist Professor Gareth Owen told the committee that it was impractical to have a consultant psychiatrist assessing each person seeking assisted suicide “given the current workforce”.