Dr. Anita Ambikapathy:

Going back before the institution argument, psychiatrists in other jurisdictions have been involved in the earlier part - not necessarily in the end-of-life part - of making that decision. They have been involved in the capacity argument about whether the person has the ability to make that decision voluntarily and coherently.

In other jurisdictions psychiatrists have been involved. We are here to show that we are sometimes dragged into this argument, willingly or unwillingly, to be the person who makes that decision about whether this person can make that decision. That is quite a huge responsibility. We all know that decision-making can change from being time-specific to issue-specific to tiredness to pain. It is a complex argument to have consistent capacity issues. That is one of the reasons we wanted to be here; we wanted to explain that the capacity discussion is a vital piece of this.