Canadian actress seeking euthanasia for mental illness.

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

Claire Brosseau

Stephanie Nolen was published in the New York Times on December 29, 2025 with an article promoting Claire Brosseau, who was diagnosed with manic depression when she was 14 and now wants to die by euthanasia based on her mental illness alone.

Canada's federal government has currently scheduled to extend the euthanasia law to include mental illness alone on March 17, 2027.

 

Tamara Jansen (MP) has sponsored private members bill Bill C-218 that will prevent the extension of euthanasia to mental illness alone.

 

The story of Claire Brosseau is a propaganda to build greater acceptance for euthanasia based on mental illness alone. Recent polls indicate that the majority of Canadians do not support extending euthanasia to mental illness alone.

 

Brosseau, who is an actress that has appeared in multiple movies, TV shows and comedy festivals. Nolen explains:

Claire Brosseau is desperate to die.

She is 48 years old and has had a life she calls an “an embarrassment of riches.” She has a vast network of friends, a devoted family, the steadfast adoration of a small dog. She has performed to raucous laughter in some of North America’s most prestigious comedy clubs and festivals, acted in movies, written brutally funny television shows. She has traveled, shopped, danced and known herself to be deeply loved.

She also suffers from debilitating mental illness that decades of treatment have not tamed. Sometimes she is so crushingly sad that she sobs until her bones ache. Sometimes she feels as if she were standing on a ledge, flipping minute by minute between being sure that if she jumped she would actually fly, and wanting to hurl herself as hard as she can onto the ground.

She has tried more times than she can count to die by suicide. She has overdosed on drugs and cut her wrists. Once she deliberately ate peanuts to trigger her severe allergy, hoping to die of anaphylaxis.

In 2021, Ms. Brosseau, who lives in Toronto, learned of a coming change to Canadian law that would allow people who suffered with an incurable medical condition but were not near death to ask a doctor to end their life.

Brosseau has joined the legal challenge that was launched by the euthanasia lobby group, Dying With Dignity, challenging the legal restriction that prevents euthanasia for mental illness alone. Nolen reported:

In April 2024, Ms. Brosseau got an email from Dying With Dignity Canada, an advocacy organization, with a question. The group was planning to go to the courts to argue that the exclusion of people with mental illness from access to assisted death was discriminatory. They had one plaintiff — a war correspondent whose last 30 years had been a hellscape of PTSD. They wanted to know if Ms. Brosseau — who had been in touch with them from time to time for updates on the law — would be another.

She agreed immediately.

She assembled thousands of pages of medical files. She labored, with her fractured memory, to tell the lawyers preparing the case the story of her 34 years of illness.

Two physicians she had never met, but who already routinely conducted assessments for people seeking assisted deaths, one of them a psychiatrist, were assigned by the legal team to assess her. Both concluded that she would be eligible under the guidelines for chronic conditions — as a person with an irremediable illness that caused her persistent, intolerable suffering, who had the capacity to make sound medical decisions — if she were not excluded by her diagnosis.

Sonu Gaind

Leading Canadian psychiatrists, including Dr Sonu Gaind, a professor of psychiatry at the University of Toronto, clinically states that it is impossible to determine whether a person's mental health condition is irremediable. The law requires that a person must have an irremediable medical condition to be approved for euthanasia.

Dr Gail Robinson, who is also professor of psychiatrist at the University of Toronto, considers Brosseau's request for euthanasia to be "a reasonable choice", Nolen reported:

“I would love her to change her mind,” Dr. Robinson told me. “I would hope that she would not have to do this. But I will support her.”

For Dr. Robinson, it is a clear case of discrimination: Ms. Brosseau is being denied medical care that is available to other Canadians purely because her chronic condition is a mental illness, not a physical one.

Dr. Mark Fefergrad, a psychiatrist who has been treating Brosseau believes that she can get better. Nolen reported him as stating:

But for Dr. Mark Fefergrad, Ms. Brosseau’s other psychiatrist, the nature of mental illness means assisted death must be considered differently. He knows Ms. Brosseau has endured periods of intense suffering, but he has also seen her improve, for a time, with some treatments.

“I believe she can get well,” he said. Using the common Canadian acronym for medical assistance in dying, he added, “I don’t think MAID is the best or only choice for her.”

Brosseau is now focused on the court case to extend euthanasia to include people with a mental illness alone before March 2027. Nolen writes:

Now when we talked, there was new energy in her voice. She had a new focus.

But still, each time, she told me that she wants to die.

The case is sitting in the courts, and Ms. Brosseau says it is more likely all the time that she will die by suicide.

The Euthanasia Prevention Coalition is promoting Bill C-218 to prevent euthanasia for mental illness alone from ever being implemented. (Link to the Bill C-218 campaign article).

EPC produced a social change film. Part of that film concerns euthanasia for mental illness. Please share our short video: No MAiD for Mental Illness (Video Link).