Dr. Louise Campbell:

That is conjecture. One would have to look at how societal attitudes are changing. I respectfully disagree with him. He said that there is an inconsistency between promoting suicide prevention programmes in society and trying to prevent suicide - as we understand the meaning of the word - in the general population, on the one hand, and promoting cautious legalisation of assisted dying, on the other. I do not see that there is an inconsistency. Persons who commit suicide are very often individuals who have fallen through the net of care, who do not have social supports or who have not tried to access social or clinical supports, whereas persons requesting suicide or assisted dying have made that request as a last resort. That is one of the conditions in many of the jurisdictions in which assisted suicide is legal. The person's suffering is intractable and their physical and psychological or existential suffering cannot be relieved. They have been psychologically assessed for the most part. Some of the data - and I am cautious about referring to it - shows that the criteria for psychological assessment is not robustly met in all cases.