How my position, as a physician, on medical aid in dying changed
A family practice physician explains why she changed her mind about Medical Aid in Dying. (Continue reading ...)
Psilocybin therapy: an option for palliative care
Psilocybin therapy reduced anxiety and depression in patients with advanced cancer, showing promising long-term results. Therapy access is limited in the US but growing. (Continue reading ...)
Debunking falsehoods about Death with Dignity
"Opponents of Death-with-Dignity (DWD) laws use several falsehoods in their attempts to prevent legislation from passing. We believe policy decisions affecting people with terminal illness should be made based on evidence and the actual content of the legislation." (Continue reading ...)
What’s Positive About Death?
"To be 'death positive' doesn’t mean that you are happy about dying." (Continue reading ...)
Having Dementia Wishes Followed
"Whose wishes for his medical treatment were we to honor? Those of my father back when he was a healthy, highly functioning geneticist? Or those of the simpler, weakened man my father had become?" (Continue reading ...)
Why Do We Fear Death And How Can We Overcome It?
"Do you ever worry about your own death, feel that life is too short, or dread the day you will lose someone you care about? You are not alone." (Continue reading ...)
Voluntary Assisted Dying Legislation Should Respect Human Rights
With the assistance of the World Federation of Right to Die Societies and Exit International, I surveyed voluntary assisted dying (VAD) advocates and supporters around the world to inject some much-needed data and objectivity into the VAD debate. (Continue reading ...)
Medical Aid In Dying Is Still Called “Assisted Suicide”; An Anthropologist Explains The Problem With That
It’s time that we revise and refine our cultural lexicon around this emergent end-of-life practice. A medically assisted death definitively warrants a linguistic and conceptual category of its own. (Continue reading ...)
Fear Of Death Underlies Most Of Our Phobias
There is growing research exploring the overwhelming anxiety that the inevitability of death, and our uncertainty about when it will occur, has the power to create. A social psychological theory, called terror management theory (TMT), is one way to understand how this anxiety influences our behaviour and sense of self. (Continue reading ...)
Times to Have “The Conversation”
“The rest is up to you,” he finally said, ending the conversation for good. He didn’t have any more guidance, and certainly no more patience to talk about it. I was surprised. To me, it felt slightly irresponsible to leave all these decisions to other people. (Continue reading ...)