Please contact your MP by email or on twitter and ask them to attend the meeting on Mental Health and Assisted Suicide happening 6.30 – 8.30pm in Committee Room 17 in Parliament. This meeting is being run by DPAC, the UK DDPO CRDP Monitoring Coalition and Eat Breathe Thrive. It is a closed meeting so that MPs can feel safe to ask questions and discuss the sensitive issues they are being forced to consider due to this Private Members Bill.
Template letter as below.
Chelsea Roff, founder of Eat Breathe Thrive says:
“A recent study found that anorexia nervosa has been classified as a terminal illness for assisted death in states like Oregon, Colorado, and California. Among 60 documented cases, a third described the deaths of young women in their teens or twenties. All were female. Many patients had high rates of depression (89%), suicidal thoughts (58%), and previous suicide attempts (37%), raising concerns about whether mental distress played a role in their requests to die.
There has also been a rise in cases where patients were prescribed lethal medication due to severe malnutrition. Colorado’s latest report includes 12 cases where “severe protein-calorie malnutrition” was listed as a terminal condition. It is unclear if these patients had anorexia, but malnutrition is not typically seen as a terminal illness, which raises important questions about how these laws are being applied.
Dear MP,
As Parliament prepares for the second reading of the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill on 29 November, there is an urgent need to consider its very real potential impact on individuals with mental health conditions, including eating disorders and those living with suicidal ideation and self-injury.
While debates on assisted dying often focus on matters of principle, the realities of implementing safeguards within the NHS are less frequently discussed.
This briefing will examine how broad definitions of ‘terminal illness’ could make young women with treatable eating disorders eligible for assisted dying, the difficulty of distinguishing voluntary requests from suicidal ideation, and the disproportionate risks faced by individuals living with suicidal ideation and self-injury.
We invite you to join us for a special briefing on these issues, sponsored by James Frith MP and co-organised by Ellen Clifford of UK Coalition of Deaf and Disabled People’s Organisations [DDPOs]* and Chelsea Roff of Eat Breathe Thrive*.
The briefing will take place on Tuesday, 19th November, 6:30-8:30pm, in Committee Room 17, House of Commons.
Speakers to include: Dr Annabel Price, Royal College of Psychiatrists; Professor Lars Mehlum, Founding director of the National Centre for Suicide Research and Prevention at the Institute of Clinical Medicine; Dr Agnes Ayton, Consultant Psychiatrist; Dr Ali Ibrahim, eating Disorder Consultant; Chelsea Roff. Eating Disorder Researcher and advocate; James Downs, Researcher and Eating Disorder Campaigner; Ellen Clifford, Disabled Activist and author. More to be announced.
Briefings and presentation hand-outs will be available on the day and sent electronically after the event to attendees. Please let us know of any access requirements.
We look forward to seeing you on Tuesday. Please RSVP to: chelsea@eatbreathethrive.org
*Eat Breathe Thrive is a nonprofit organization that works to prevent and help people recover from eating disorders through yoga.
* UK DDPO Convention on the Rights of Disabled People [CRDP] Monitoring Coalition is a network of used led organisations established to monitor implementation of the CRDP and lobby government on shared priorities for Deaf and Disabled people across the UK.
