What is a 'safe death'? Mentally ill woman asks for assisted dying in Canada

Canada has twice delayed access to medically assisted dying for those with mental illness. Claire Brosseau says she cannot wait any longer and wants the courts to decide.

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Brosseau has tried nearly every treatment available to people like herself with bipolar disorder and PTSD, she said, from behavioural therapy and medication to electric shocks to the brain.

Nothing has worked for the 49-year-old Toronto woman, who described herself as "functionally terminal", no longer able to work, leave the house or speak with her loved ones. She is now enrolled in a psychiatric care programme at a local hospital that, she said, is designed to support people with severe and persistent mental illness who have exhausted all treatment options.

"There's nothing left to try, and I'm at the end of my life," she told the BBC.

Brosseau wants to die by medically assisted dying, also known as euthanasia and in Canada, under the acronym MAID. While it is legal in Canada, it is not currently available to those whose sole condition is mental illness.