Dr. Louise Campbell:

Again, Belgium and the Netherlands do not have a requirement that the illness is terminal or physical.

What they do require is that it is irremediable; that perhaps multiple attempts have been made to remedy it or cure it and they have all failed, and that the suffering the person endures is unbearable on their own terms.

To go back to what we were talking about with Senator Mullen earlier, where a third party arbitrates or adjudicates the quality of the person's life or the degree of their suffering, it is very difficult to make a determination as legislators which distinguishes between unbearable suffering experienced by somebody on the basis of a mental illness that he or she has had all their life - where a person still has capacity - and on the other hand an unbearable suffering experienced by a person who has a physical illness. Both of them are experiencing suffering that is intolerable on their own terms. If we have a duty to one category of person in that situation, do we not have an equivalent duty to another category of person, provided that he or she meets the capacity and voluntariness requirements and provided that there are additional safeguards in place to ensure that those capacity and voluntariness requirements are met in the case of mental illness? I agree that it could be seen as discriminatory not to allow it. I could see that it would pose problems from a disability rights point of view, but it has been argued that it could be discriminatory to distinguish between suffering based entirely on physical illness and an equivalent degree of suffering based entirely on mental illness. It is something to seriously consider.