Baroness Gerada (CB)

My Lords, I am completely in favour of Amendment 87. I have permission to use the name of my patient, Melanie Spooner, who died from anorexia nervosa—she died from taking her own life. The end point of anorexia nervosa is often that the patient wants to die. As such, it is a terrible mental illness, and I think that not conflating and excluding this group is absolutely the right way forward. One other issue has been bothering me ever since I have been coming to these Fridays: it is the conflation of the words assisted suicide with assisted death. For a decade now, I have been looking after those bereaved following the death by suicide of their loved ones, and I have about 100 people whom I care for. Suicide is often a violent act; it is often an act done alone and it is often done to punish people—I am terribly sorry if anyone here knows people who have killed themselves. It is a very prolonged bereavement, and a very complicated grief that affects up to 60 to 70 people in its wake. Assisted death, as we have heard from the group that came from Australia, can sometimes be filled with hope and sometimes with joy, with family around for those last moments. It affects both groups: those whom I look after, who have been bereaved following suicide, and the relatives of those who have taken voluntary assisted death. It is such a small thing, but it really grates, and it is one of the most inappropriate and irresponsible ways of conflating the language.