Suicide prevention group concerned about the legalization of assisted suicide

Death should never be a substitute for adequate care and support.

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

The International Association for Suicide Prevention (IASP) published a statement on assisted suicide and euthanasia in 2025. Considering the silence by many suicide prevention groups, the statement of the IASP is important. The statement says:

There is a strong potential for overlap or equivalence between what we consider to be suicide and euthanasia and assisted suicide (EaAS), particularly when EaAS is provided not at the end of life and instead to those with chronic conditions for whom death is not imminent. Research and clinical experience indicate that when a person has an irremediable illness or life situation, steps can still be taken to remediate the suffering and reasons motivating their desire to die. Even when it may convincingly appear to be hopeless, premature deaths can be prevented. IASP’s position is that:

1. Jurisdictions considering legalising and/or expanding the availability of assisted suicide and euthanasia should engage meaningfully with suicide prevention experts and/or organisations to carefully weigh concerns about overlap between what is being contemplated and what we usually consider to be suicide. Any such concerns should have a prominent impact on decision-making.

2. Jurisdictions that legalise and regulate assisted suicide and euthanasia must ensure that other means to alleviate a person’s physical and emotional suffering, including provision of better psychosocial and material supports, mental health services and palliative care, are systematically offered and provided. Death should never be a substitute for adequate care and support.

The IASP statement further suggests:

• All persons who are seeking to end their lives have the same access to high quality suicide prevention assessments and interventions.
• All people and organizations who work in suicide prevention must to their utmost to provide the same level of quality help and interventions to all people who express a wish to die.
• All people in suicide prevention should be provided with end-of-life and hospice/palliative care training.

The statement continues:

4. IASP encourages and supports research on the relationship between suicide and assisted suicide and euthanasia, and research on best practices in suicide prevention assessments and interventions with persons who are suffering from irremediable medical conditions, as well as ethical standards for suicide prevention with these populations.

5. IASP is concerned that because of the inability, documented in current research, to predict which persons with a mental illness have a poor or hopeless prognosis, and which will substantially improve, with or without treatment, we should not allow access to EaAS for persons whose suffering is solely associated with a mental illness.

This IASP statement is important since the death lobby argues that there is a clear difference between requests for suicide as compared to requests for assisted suicide and/or euthanasia.

In March 2021, (MAiD) euthanasia was extended to people who are not terminally ill but rather living with a grievous and irremediable medical conditions in Canada. Many of these euthanasia deaths appear to be requests for death based on suicidal ideation. Instead of receiving suicide prevention or mental health supports, these people become approved to be killed by euthanasia. This is a form of abandonment, not a "freedom" to choose death.

Hopefully the International Association for Suicide Prevention (IASP) statement will lead to legislatures, world-wide, rejecting the legalization of euthanasia and/or assisted suicide.