MAID
Through Their Eyes
Psychedelic solutions for palliative Canadians and a serious national mental health crisis.
Changing minds, for good.
- End-of-life distress (EOLD) is identified as a primary reason why individuals pursue MAID*
- EOLD is associated with poor treatment and psychological outcomes, including decreased medication adherence, diminished quality of life, an increased desire for hastened death, and higher rates of suicide**
- Clinical research has established the safety, tolerability, and efficacy of psilocybin in the treatment of EOLD and mental health anguish*
- While MAID is a protected right in Canada, patients approaching death may be underserved if promising therapies are withheld*
- There is a lack of reliable pharmacological interventions for palliative dread*
- MAID is as much about improving the quality of life as it is ending it.
Why MAID? Why now?
Canadians need and deserve all options to relieve mental distress and suffering.
- Canada is facing a catastrophic mental health crisis, exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic. Solutions are needed NOW to help Canadians heal.
- It took 19 years for cannabis to be legalized after the first section 56 exemption. Canadians suffering from palliative depression, anxiety, and severe mental health disorders cannot wait for the courts to figure out the constitutionality of psychedelics.
- The use of psychedelics as an underground self-treatment option for low-to-severe range mental health conditions is on the rise.
- Conversations around the regulation and use of psychedelics in clinical settings need to develop as quickly as possible, in order to meet the rising demand from patients who are not able to access more traditional mental health treatments.
- Psychedelic-assisted therapy can promote patients to safely surface concerns about mortality and face death, our “primordial fear”*...enabling resolution of these concerns*
- Psychedelic therapies also help patients find meaning in death, embrace mortality, and appreciate their lives*
“I was being dragged by a horse called Cancer towards a cliff called death, but psilocybin stopped the horse.”“Everybody looks at me and says,‘You don’t look sick at all!' I don’t have all the fear and anxiety anymore.”
Thomas Hartle & Laurie Brooks : the first palliative Canadians exempted by Health Canada to legally receive psilocybin-assisted therapy
We are already here, so...
- Please agree to hear testimony from psychedelic medical experts and researchers.
- Please agree to hear testimony from the palliative Canadians who have received section 56 exemptions.
- Please consider recommending a psychedelic sub-committee on MAID to examine the therapeutic impact of psychedelic medicines.
- Please encourage Minister Hajdu and Minister Lametti to appoint a psychedelic medical expert to the Independent Expert Review Panel.
#MAIDcoalition