I certainly don't view it the way MAID activists have argued, which is that if you can't get a cure or relief in the moment, that should qualify you.
The Benelux countries, which at least require that standard treatments be tried first, has a fine safeguard, but then it begs the question of what “standard treatments” are. I'm a subspecialist psychiatrist. I'm a psychiatrist's psychiatrist. People get referred to me whom other psychiatrists say can't get better and they don't know what to do, and those people get better. Irremediable... We're not talking about a cure, although I have patients we could easily say are cured in the sense that diabetes is cured if you take your medications for the rest of your life; it will have no significant impact on the quality or longevity of your life. That certainly happens all the time in psychiatry.
Do I have patients for whom symptom persist? Absolutely. Do I have patients for whom symptoms can never be ameliorated? Never, not once.
I stand here representing the 70 ACT psychiatrists who do subspeciality work in Ontario. There are always ways to reduce suffering. I don't mean to break the rules of the club, but not all psychiatrists are subspecialists. Not all cardiologists are cardiac surgeons.