Member

A more immediate concern is the widespread limited availability of high-quality, evidence-based specialist palliative care. Inadequate provision can create circumstances in which patients feel they have few viable alternatives, thus making assisted dying appear the only realistic option. We have seen similar processes within mental health services, where insufficient and poorly resourced community provision leads to the inappropriate or prolonged use of in-patient detention, simply because no alternative exists. We must avoid replicating this pattern with assisted dying. Systemic or institutional pressures, including service gaps and funding constraints, must not result in patients being channelled or coerced, intentionally or otherwise, towards an assisted death, feeling that this is the only viable option for them or that they are a burden.