A menacing spirit of despair has wormed its way into the soul of the West. If Americans look to their immediate north, a grisly future beckons. For in Canada, not only is death being embraced as an answer to the somber realities of modern existence, it is being institutionalized as a ministry in service to mass cultural hopelessness.
Suicide Surge
“Nearly 50,000 Americans took their own lives in 2022, the highest number on record, provisional data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released [Aug. 10] showed, as the suicide epidemic in the US reaches a grim new mark,” Forbes reported.
The uptick cuts through the various demographic categories. “Adults 65 and older recorded the largest increase among the age categories the agency tracks, with suicide rates up 8.1% from 2021,” the news site noted. However, “[P]eople age 45 to 64 saw a 6.6% rise and the rate of suicide among the 25 to 44 increased about 0.7% ... Among the racial and ethnic groups the CDC tracks, Native Hawaiian and other Pacific Islanders had the largest increase in 2022, up 15.9%, according to the CDC.”
There are numerous possible explanations for the stark increase, which won’t be mulled over in depth here. But two significant crises stand out. Mental and physical health are deteriorating rapidly in the United States, pointing to a fundamental situation in which human beings quite simply do not thrive in the culture we have created today.
“In 2021, nearly 1 in 4 US adults ages 18 and older had a mental illness in the [preceding] year,” the US Census Bureau reported in June. “Hospitalizations and emergency room visits for suicide attempts and ideation rose nationally among children and teens from 2016 to 2021,” a study published in July in The Journal of the American Medical Association’s JAMA Network Open stated, NBC News reported last month.
“Other recent research has similarly shown a rise in mental health challenges among youths, particularly adolescent girls,” the network noted. “A 2021 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention survey found that nearly 57% of teen girls reported feeling ‘persistently sad or hopeless’ and 22% of teens said they had seriously considered dying by suicide. Even before the [coronavirus] pandemic, the CDC reported that 1 in 5 teenagers had experienced episodes of major depression.”
The persistent, and one fears deliberate, refusal to tie the increase in mental health problems, especially among the young, to the dismal state of physical health in America further serves to obfuscate the true scope of what is indeed a national emergency.
As Liberty Nation documented in March:
“New reports reveal what anyone walking around in much of this country can already see for themselves: The obesity crisis in America is getting worse ... ‘Excess weight or obesity boosts risk of death by anywhere from 22% to 91% – significantly more than previously believed,’ a Feb. 23 University of Colorado summary of a new report reads, ‘while the mortality risk of being slightly underweight has likely been overestimated’...
“‘In the early 1960s around 5 percent of US children and teens were obese. By 2019, that total rose to 19 percent,’ The Hill observed on Feb. 24. ‘Should current trends continue, some reports estimate 57 percent of children between the ages 2 and 19 will be obese as adults in 2050.’”
Given all this, it should be highly alarming to see what our North American cousin is doing to formally structuralize a culture of despondence that ends in induced death.
Why Don’t You Kill Yourself?
Canadian newspaper The Toronto Globe and Mail reported on Aug. 9:
“Kathrin Mentler, 37, lives with chronic depression and suicidality, both of which she says were exacerbated by a traumatic event early this year. Feeling particularly vulnerable in June, she went to Vancouver General Hospital looking for psychiatric help in dealing with feelings of hopelessness she feared she couldn’t shake.
“Instead, Ms. Mentler says a clinician told her there would be long waits to see a psychiatrist and that the health care system is ‘broken.’ That was followed by a jarring question: ‘Have you considered MAID?’”
MAiD (Medical Assistance in Dying) is Canada’s official euthanasia program. From its inception in 2016, it has been plagued by accusations that it pressures vulnerable people seeking help to kill themselves with government assistance.
(Photo by Smith Collection/Gado/Getty Images)
“Publicized cases have fueled criticisms that the life-ending procedure is being offered in lieu of sufficient mental health and social supports,” The Globe and Mail related. “In April, 2022, CTV News reported that a 51-year-old Ontario woman with severe sensitivities to chemicals chose MAID after failing to find affordable housing free of cigarette smoke and chemical cleaners. And last August, Global News reported that a Canadian Forces veteran seeking treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder and a traumatic brain injury was unexpectedly offered MAID by a Veterans Affairs Canada employee.”
It's all perfectly logical. An overly materialistic Western ethos has evolved to take a purely utilitarian approach to human life. Value judgments are being placed on unique individuals that factor in only the perceived material benefit or burden they present in the eyes of governing officials.
If you think that is an overstatement, consider this. MAiD has been an admitted major boon to organ donation in Canada’s largest province by population.
Trillium Gift of Life Network is the official organ-donation intermediary of Ontario’s government. “In the first 11 months of 2019, MAiD patients in the province accounted for 18 organ and 95 tissue donors, a 14 percent increase over 2018 and a 109 percent increase over 2017,” The Ottawa Citizen reported in January 2020.
Organ donation in Canada has continued to rise since then. “Canada performing more organ transplants from MAID donors than any country in the world,” read the headline from a January CTV report.
Trillium admitted that it encourages Ontarians choosing state-assisted euthanasia to consider donating their organs. “[A]s part of high-quality end-of-life care, we make sure that all patients and families are provided with the information they need and the opportunity to make a decision on whether they wish to make a donation,” Trillium CEO Ronnie Gavsie told The Citizen.
(Photo by Octavio Jones/Getty Images)
Oh, but it goes beyond that. Trillium staffers are a mandatory part of the euthanasia process in Ontario. They don’t merely engage in discussions on organ donation with suicide candidates; they initiate them.
“To provide the best possible support to patients, their families and healthcare professionals, TGLN requires notification after a request for MAID is received in writing and one physician has confirmed the patient meets the eligibility requirements,” a document titled “Organ and Tissue Donation Following Medical Assistance in Dying: Program Development Toolkit” on the Trillium website openly states.
In short, you cannot kill yourself in Ontario via state-sanctioned euthanasia without an affiliated agency of the provincial government first imploring you to donate your organs. This ultimately means a local government of a prominent Western nation bordering the United States has a material incentive to see its citizens succumb to deaths of despair.
Human beings as mere economic units on a government list: That has been a hallmark of tyrannies since time immemorial. It never ends well. Sadly, given the spiritual state of America today, Canada seems far more likely to serve as a trailblazer than a cautionary example.
