Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
Thanks so much to the guests who are here today.
I want to follow up on what Dr. Sockalingam was talking about with respect to the CPA's guidance document, which I reviewed.
In particular, I want to talk about section 2, “Guidance for Assessing and Managing Suicide Risk of the Requester”. I've written down a portion of the document here.
It notes:
Jurisdictions that allow assisted dying for persons with mental [health] disorders as the sole underlying medical condition have found that most Requesters have a history of suicidal ideation and (or) suicide attempts; however, the presence of a history of suicidality does not prevent the Requester from being eligible.
In your opinion, Doctor.... You touched on this a bit. My question is, do clinicians and providers have the tools available to make these assessments and to determine them with some degree of accuracy, particularly given a historical context of previous suicide attempts?