which is straight after this programme. normally, my day begins by changing my t—shirt. it's soaking wet from the sweat from the nightmares. i wake up most mornings saying, "not another day." as a person suffering from mental illness, i, and other people, are invisible. no—one recognises us. they are embarrassed by mental illness, and that's — the stigma is vast. if medical assistance in dying had been available, back during those times where things were really, really low — like, there was no hope, i wouldn't be here today.

i would've died thinking i had a depression that would never go away. if canada doesn't delay maid for mental illness, i would feel... ..that we're disposable. i'll speak on behalf of those who don't have a voice, those who are frightened to have a voice. i hope i'm speaking for them. it's the one thing i believe i have to do — to advocate for the mentally ill and advocate for a proper way for assisted death for the mentally ill. around the world, there are conversations on medically assisted dying. germany, france and the uk are all currently debating whether it should be permitted and for whom. medical assistance in dying in canada, also known as maid, is available for adults

with terminal illness or serious and chronic medical conditions, but is not yet available for people who suffer solely from a mental illness. it's a controversial idea the country is currently debating. my name isjohn scully. i'm 82 years old. i've been diagnosed with severe depression, incurable ptsd and incurable anxiety disorder. i sufferfrom somatic pain, chronic pain — that means pain that they can't diagnose and assume it's psychiatric. i've been in this condition for roughly a0 years. all of my illnesses, really, go back to childhood, when i was growing up in wellington, new zealand, where i suffered from chronic, desperately bad asthma.

that was not good for my health, or my mental health, and i think that's the start of my mental decline right there. because of my asthma, i missed most of the school year. i was not going to make anything of myself. and with the urging of my parents, they put me into a trade, washing floors at a new local newspaper — that's how i got intojournalism. john eventually started a career in broadcast journalism, working for various news outlets, including cbc and the bbc. here is a variety of press passes and accreditations from — that's india, i think. this is a press pass from russia. this is us getting set up in uganda, in kampala. they kept sending me

to cover the troubles in northern ireland, with bombs and guns and things going off in the night. it was hairy. but, you know, you did it, because you were a journalist. they also sent me to do a documentary on the indo—pak border. we were covering the refugees pouring across the border. but the refugees were riddled with cholera and disease and they were dropping, literally, in front of us. that was really my first horrific war zone and, i guess, the real start of ptsd. fear is good. it's healthy. if you're not frightened, you get killed. but i was thinking that i have to control the fear,

be calm and go ahead and get the story. and i'd go back to the hotel, if there was one around, and get hammered at night. that was my antidepressant. i started bouncing around from war zone to war zone and i steeled myself all the time. i paid a huge price for it. dying with dignity is an advocacy group for people considering medically assisted dying. as controversy around the potential expansion builds, they've received an increase in calls from people with mental health problems. the team are doing additional training to better protect callers. suicide intervention is really a conversation, right, between two people. there'll be a moment where this person might recognise that they have some reasons to stay alive. we have some really difficult calls — people who cannot access maid, who are not eligible, or maybe the law doesn't allow them to access maid

at this time. some of the calls are distressing. and, you know, sometimes a wellness check has to be done. assisted dying for those with a mental disorder as their sole underlying condition is not currently legal. we expect that to change in 2024. what exactly that will look like, we're still not 100% sure. there will be a longer assessment period. right now, for those people who are in what we call track two, or whose deaths are not foreseeable, it's a minimum of 90 days. we anticipate it will be at least the same for those with a mental disorder. there will be some consultation with an individual with expertise — so, whether it's a psychiatrist or a counsellor or therapist — that type of consultation will be required. clinicians are really going to be looking at the history, how long people have been working on their mental health, what treatments have they tried, you know, what has their life been like? they'll be ensuring people aren't currently suicidal. maid is not for someone who's suicidal.

it's a well—thought—out decision from someone who is, you know, in the right frame of mind. what i think is important is that people have the right to choose, and the suffering that we hear about and that people experience as a result of a mental illness can be just as hard, just as difficult as from a physical illness. you coming? when you talk to someone like john and you hear about his decades of trauma, it's really difficult for me to understand how anyone couldn't agree that this is a person who needs the opportunity to be assessed. so, we start with calcium. you've only got one of those left. uh? three left? one. one?! one. in our everyday, ongoing lives, i don't try and help him too much because if i do, he'll just sit in the chair all day. so, if he wants to make tea, i say, "yes, that'd be very "nice to make tea," so he has to get up and make

the tea, and he has to. and i have to remind him to take the walker because he'll get halfway across the room and start falling over, so i have to make sure that either i can get the walker to him or i can catch him. i met my wife, toni, - in a coffee shop in wellington, new zealand. she saw me in the coffee shop reading a donald duck comic. and she kind of found — - this was kind of weird, some clown reading a donald duck comic — a grown man. - well, a 20—year—old. we got to love each other. she is a treasure and a gem. i live for her. when i started to get sick- and immobile, there's nothing she wouldn't do — to this very day. i my body collapsed. my mind collapsed terribly. i had to get rid - of the depression. i had attempted suicide twice.

the ptsd plays into it- all the time, as does anxiety — they all roll into one. the last time it happened, i was living up north and john was renting a place in the city because he was working in the city at the time. and i got a call from him, saying he'd taken a whole bunch of pills. it's a 2.5—hour, 3—hour drive, so... ..i left and drove as fast as i could. i called my daughter, who had just got married recently, and she and her new husband got him some help and checked him out and into the hospital and, yeah, it was not an easy time. i've been through every single treatment it's possible to get.

i take 30 pills a day — three zero. _ that's to deal with other - physical and mental problems. i've had 19 shock therapies, eight transcranial magnetic| stimulation — that's i where they put a band around your head of electrodes. it did no good, but god i knows what harm it did. all of that has contributed . to my plight now, where i'm looking for maid. i think toni finds it tough. i think she'll tell— you that she is behind me, whatever i decide. my kids are like that, too. whatever i decide - about living and dying, they are with me. as brutal as it may be, - or as grief—stricken as it may be, they are with me.

here it is. this is an application for maid. _ "patient request for medical assistance in dying." - it excludes mental illnessl because i got this before — well, the law hasn't beenj passed, so there's no law in place for the paperwork to be in place. _ i don't think i've really. looked through it before or read it. chuckles an eye—opener. yeah? what surprises you? just...the way it's worded. i hadn't actually thought about it. yeah. and had it been available, maybe you would have already. yeah. but i'm thankful for the delay in a way, cos you're still here with me. that's a blessing or a curse — i'm not sure which. well, you have the ability to make it a blessing. uh-huh. chuckles

so, i think it should be available to you, if you want it. and if you want it, that's a personal choice within the law, which is perfectly good. you can have your family around you, they can support you. it can be a pleasant way to go. notjust, "maybe somebody will catch me before i — - "the pills take over." suicide is not something i can handle. i refuse to let you think that you're going to do that. sorry. yeah, but there's the possibility. i i mean, do you talk- about maid or suicide? suicide. 0h! if you decide to do maid, that's one thing. suicide is something totally different, and you're not allowed to do it. why not?

because i'll punch you in the nose. now, that would hurt, but i'd be dead. - chuckles in 2015, the canadian supreme court ruled that banning assisted dying deprived canadians of their dignity and autonomy, but the legislation to include maid solely for mental health keeps getting delayed. for some, though, these deferrals have been crucial in finding the right treatment. my struggle with mental illness started when i was 23. like, my father died of cancer, and it took, like — it was three weeks and he was dead, so that was a shock. the first time i really experienced that kind of pain. after that, i kind of went downhill, let's say, for the next couple of years. i was at the university doing my phd but it wasn't going well,

i couldn't focus. so, between 25 and a5, approximately, i had several bouts of depression. like, it was recurring. so, every time they'd give me antidepressants and then, i'd go crashing again and, with higher and higher doses, it was getting more difficult to get better. i had, you know, several moments where i was suicidal. georgia eventually received the correct diagnosis for bipolar disorder, rather than depression, in 2021. the change of medication changed her life and her outlook on mental health. life for me has changed since i got my diagnosis. well, you know, iam married. i also paint, have a house. you know, life is pretty good. i have my friends. if maid had been available back during those times where things were really,

really low and i was suffering a lot and crying and just, you know, like, there was no hope, if i asked for it, i would have gotten it and i wouldn't be here today and i wouldn't have been — i wouldn't have known my real diagnosis — the right diagnosis — in 2021. i would have died thinking i had a depression that would never go away. on the individual level, like, i'm not diminishing at all people suffering because i know what it is. but if canada doesn't delay maid for mental illness, i would feel, like, angry, but also dismissed. i would feel that we're disposable. there's too many clashes and too much controversy for us to say let's go. in 2022, 4.1% of all deaths in canada were medically assisted.

if passed, they would be one of a handful of countries allowing euthanasia due to psychiatric suffering. it is currently allowed in countries like belgium and the netherlands under stringent conditions. the medical community in canada remains divided on the new potential law. my name is sonu gaind. i'm a professor of psychiatry at the university of toronto. i'm a former president of the canadian psychiatric association as well. if maid for sole mental illness had been started to be provided, ifundamentally feel it would have been irresponsible. all the evidence shows us that when we attempt to make predictions of irremediability in mental illness, we are wrong more than half the time. it's literally better to flip a coin to guess whether somebody will or will not get better from a sole mental illness. we don't even understand the underlying biology

of the vast majority of mental illnesses. and the second problem with mental illness is evidence shows us we do not know how to separate or distinguish suicidality that's actually a symptom of the mental illness itself from other motivations leading to psychiatric maid or psychiatric euthanasia requests. the evidence in europe shows us that there's actually overlapping characteristics between people who are suicidal from mental illness symptoms, who can benefit from suicide prevention, and people who seek and get psychiatric euthanasia there. and so, it's not only that we don't know how to separate those groups, we don't even know if they are separate groups. and that combined leads to the third problem, which is that then, in particular, you risk and jeopardise the most marginalised people in society.

and, unfortunately, we know that with mental illness, there are also concurrent higher rates of social suffering, like poverty, loneliness, housing insecurity, isolation, all sorts of social suffering. and so, it's a terrible perfect storm where you're taking somebody in a period of genuine suffering who, from their illness itself, they have a hard time separating out what any possible hopeful future might or might not be. and in the context of issues like maid, the problem becomes that we need to predict who will not get better. and i can think in my own practice of a number of people who struggled for a long time, we tried various things, they didn't get better for a long time, and then, they did. dr chantal perrot has been a maid assessor and provider since 2016, when it

first became available. she supports the expansion and has worked in mental health for a0 years. i don't think of it as killing someone. when i provide maid, i do end a life, but it's at the person's request and it's a clear and consistent request on their part for their suffering to end. and i consider it a tremendous honour and a privilege to meet people at that stage of their lives and to be able to help them. i think people have a very rudimentary idea of what mental health is in canada. there's a very strong mentality of, "oh, if theyjust worked "harder, if they pull themselves up by their "bootstraps, they would be able to get on with it," and it's just not like that. i think a lot of people don't understand that aspect of it, just how debilitating it can be to live with a mental disorder. can people with these disorders live and enjoy life? absolutely. but some cannot. and again, it's those few people who cannot, who are suffering intolerably, who deserve the right to be assessed for maid. there have been people that

have been waiting and hoping since 2016 to be able to apply and — but again, of those many that might apply initially, very few would be found eligible. oftentimes, people are concerned that the 17—year—old boy whose girlfriend has dumped him and he's now very depressed and says he wants to die, that he would be found eligible for maid. he wouldn't because he's 17. but even if he turned 18, he would not be found eligible for maid. that would be an acute situational crisis, which would likely render him incapable of making that kind of decision. i think it's very possible to make a distinction between somebody who has suicidal ideation and someone who has a rational request to die with medical assistance and somebody who's, again, in the throes of an acute episode of mental disorder would not be found eligible. at a particular moment in time, it may be difficult to make that discernment, but you speak to people over a period of time. somebody applying under the mental disorders would not be seen in one interview and then receive maid. so, we would want to see somebody who was rational,

had mental capacity, talking about wanting maid, and that they were clear and consistent in that request, and not wavering. and so, i think that's a very different story than somebody who has suicidal ideation. as the debate continues, it remains unclear if the law will be passed by the proposed deadline in 202a. polling suggests that only 42% of canadians support expanding eligibility solely for mental illness. john has been asked to record his testimony to present to canadian mps as they deliberate. hi. can you see me? i can see you just fine. i'm ready to record when you are. my name isjohn scully. i'm 82. i'm severely mentally ill. i've been a patient in seven psych wards. i've seen dozens of psychiatrists. i've tried every drug known...

i don't feel a burden to speak out about maid. i have a moral obligation to speak out for the rights of the mentally ill and for the rights of people who want maid for the mentally ill. i think it's myjob. it's all i've got left. but i do it absolutely willingly and i do it because i believe in what i'm doing. i want maid for the mentally ill to be passed without any further cruel delays. it must be passed on schedule, devoid of the obfuscation that has prevented it from passing in the last three years. automated voice: recording stopped. that's that. i don't know how it went, you know? i felt i stumbled a couple of times. yeah... i think now is the time to make a cup of tea.

thank you. so, in parliament today was tabled the joint committee report looking at medical assistance in dying where mental illness is the sole underlying condition. we agree with the conclusion that the committee has come to that the system is, at this time, is not ready and more time is required. on the question of whether or not there's equivalency between mental and physical suffering, i don't think there's any question that there is equivalency. the question here is one of readiness. after repeated delays, the government announces the law will be postponed a further three years to march 2027. i was relieved. i was actually glad and appreciative that the government took a sober look and stepped back from the brink. i do recognise that there are people who are going to be disappointed. i feel it's very unfortunate

that the narrative they've pushed is that, "the only way we can help you is by providing "maid," because then, when that gets taken away, that represents yet another disappointment. people are genuinely suffering. but maybe the questions we honestly, as a society, need to ask first is, "how do we actually help "people live better?" since last filming withjohn, he has been taken into hospital after a fall at home. he's still processing the news. i was sitting at home, watching tv, and i saw that the government has now booted it to whatever year and i was shocked. i was just — i felt beaten. i felt that i had lost. we are now not treated as equals. we're not treated as a person with a physical illness. we now have to fight this battle all over again because of that government decision. that's a stamp saying, "you're mentally ill. "you don't matter."

and that's been the attitude towards the mentally ill for generations. it makes it harder for people to live with mental illness and be open about it. it's a secret illness now and it's pushed further under the carpet.

hello there. we're seeing some changes to the weather this weekend. part two of the weekend promises to be quite wet across some eastern areas. another chilly but bright day further west that you are. but it marks a change to our weather because, as we move into the new week, we'll start to draw up some warmer air from the near continent. many areas will actually turn a lot warmer than what we've had over the past week. this area of low pressure will continue to bring some rain to central, southern and eastern parts of england through the night. so, early sunday, this is the position the rain will be in. less cold for england and wales — 5—8 degrees — but another cold night to come for scotland and northern ireland with a touch of frost, but it's here you'll have the best of the sunshine from the word go for sunday morning.

further east, it'll be a cloudy, wet picture with that rain slowly pulling away from eastern england, becoming confined to north—east scotland, the northern isles. elsewhere, plenty of sunshine around and a few scattered showers developing into the afternoon and a windy day to come, particularly close to the north sea, close near to that area of rain. temperature—wise, the low teens for many but distinctly chilly again across this northeast corner. that rain continues to clear northwards into the northern isles during sunday night. it turns a lot drier for many with clear spells. we'll start to see thicker cloud and some showery bursts of rain pushing into western areas, though, by the end of the night — though many areas will stay dry. temperature—wise — well, actually milder for many, particularly scotland and northern ireland, than what we've had of late. still a few chilly spots there for northeast scotland. this is the picture for monday, you see there the pressure picture. we've got low pressure out toward the west. this will be bringing south or southwesterly winds across the country and, actually, for large parts of england and wales, particularly towards the south

and east, it's going to stay dry all day with some good spells of sunshine but rain will be splashing into western areas and moving across the irish sea as we move through the course of the day. some of this will be quite heavy. we've got the low teens celsius in the north and the west. could be up to 16 or 17 celsius in the southeast with that sunshine and the warm wind coming off the near continent. for the rest of the week, we hold on to lower pressure towards the west of the uk. that will continue to bring our air source from the southeast or the east at times and there will be weather fronts close by, so it's an unsettled theme, i think, but it's going to feel warmer throughout this week than what we've had over the past week. it could be up to 20 degrees in the warmest spots across the southeast. but with low pressure nearby, it will tend to remain on the unsettled side. take care.

live from london. this is bbc news. israel's foreign minister

says his country's military could suspend its planned incursion into rafah if there is a deal where hamas releases its remaining hostages. the latest stand—off in a wave of pro—palestinian sit—ins in the us — police detained hundreds on university campuses across the country. former health minister and conservative mp daniel poulter defects to labour, saying he disagreed with the conservative party's handling of the nhs. and a gold pocket watch worn by the wealthiest passenger on the titanic sells for six times the asking price. hello and welcome to bbc news. i'm lukwesa burak. we start in the middle east — where israel's foreign minister has said a planned ground assault on the southern gaza city of rafah could be

suspended, if a deal emerges to free the hostages still held by hamas.