My name is Anita Cameron. I am Director of Minority Outreach for Not Dead Yet, a Rochester, NY-based, national disability rights group opposed to medical discrimination against disabled people, medical rationing, euthanasia and doctor assisted suicide.
I’m also a psychiatric survivor. I live with chronic depression and anxiety.
My first experience with the mental health system was at age 19. I was living in rural Western Michigan in a little apartment that I was quite proud of. I’d recently moved there from Chicago, and had been living on my own since age 16, when I entered university.
I was born with multiple disabilities, including low vision and epilepsy, but I was able to live independently in the community.
While living in Michigan, my seizures became uncontrolled and I was hospitalized 30 miles from home, as my tiny town had no hospital. When my seizures were finally controlled with a new medication, I wanted to go home to my apartment. The hospital stalled, but one day, the sheriff came to pick me up. I assumed that they were taking me home, but no – they took me 300 miles from home – to a psychiatric hospital! I was taken before a judge, and it was explained to me that because I wanted to go home, I was considered a danger to myself, because disabled people shouldn’t live alone. I was committed for up to 60 days, but I wound up fighting for 8 months to get out of there. Finally, with the help of my music therapist, I was able to get out and return home to Chicago.
That experience was so traumatic that it led to decades of a revolving door experience in psychiatric hospitals. I was depressed and suicidal, indeed, I had attempted suicide many times.
After years of therapy, I got to the point where I no longer wanted to die. I fought for my life and for my mental health and I won! It’s been 16 years since my last hospitalization. I’m also a writer, and I use my writing to get my feelings out and clear my head. If not for writing, I don’t know if my recovery would have been fully possible. I’ve written about mental health issues and the discrimination we face.
I then used my writing to create gig opportunities for myself, culminating in my position at Not Dead Yet. I have written persuasively about opposition to a public policy of assisted suicide from the perspective of communities of color who experience disparities in access to healthcare. I was even cited in the 2019 National Council on Disability report on the dangers of assisted suicide as public policy.
One of the reasons I’m so vehemently against assisted suicide is that it turns suicide prevention on it’s head. It makes death an option for medical treatment, which is absolutely terrifying.
Now, in some states where assisted suicide is law, assisted suicide proponents are trying to broaden it by advocating that those dealing with mental health issues should be able to request doctor assisted suicide. This is already law in countries like The Netherlands, Belgium and most recently, Canada, though there will be an 18-month study period before it’s implemented.
We cannot allow this to happen! Those of us with mental health conditions need services and supports, not death! As long as disability discrimination exists in healthcare, as long as mental health conditions and people living with them continue to be stigmatized and ostracized, death should never be a “treatment” option under any circumstances.
If you’d like you learn more about why physician assisted suicide and other forms of disability discrimination in medicine are dangerous public policy, visit Not Dead Yet at www.notdeadyet.org and DREDF at https://dredf.org/public-policy/assisted-suicide/.
