At the Threshold: Supporting Individuals Considering and Pursuing Medical Assistance in Dying (MAiD)

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dc.contributor.authorPatenaude, Andrea
dc.date.accessioned2025-05-29T21:20:34Z
dc.date.available2025-05-29T21:20:34Z
dc.date.issued2025-04-13
dc.description.abstractThe recent scholarship on MAiD in Canada highlights the need for MAiD-specific psychosocial support for recipients and their supporters, yet there is limited guidance for counsellors wishing to fill that need. This capstone project addresses the question of how counselling professionals can best support individuals who are considering and choosing to pursue MAiD in Canada. Based on a narrative integrative approach to reviewing the academic literature, this capstone sought to understand the nature and phenomenology of the suffering that leads people to consider MAiD, to characterize the experiential elements of choosing MAiD and to identify possible approaches for the treatment of existential suffering that could be drawn upon or modified in devising psychotherapeutic interventions for this population. This work uniquely highlights the ways that MAiD experiences are qualitatively different than other end of life trajectories and proposes a four-phase model of client needs based on where they are in the MAiD process as well as recommendations for counselling responses. Practical and theoretical considerations for relieving existential distress highlight important features of possible treatment approaches and ways that existing evidence-based manualized treatments might be modified to explicitly incorporate MAiD content into their programs. Ethical considerations related to maintenance of dignity and autonomy, the need to emphasize limits to confidentiality, special risks to consider in obtaining informed consent and issues of maleficence related to counsellor competence and training are identified. The work concludes with recommendations to guide practice and for future research.
dc.identifier.urihttps://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11803/3488
dc.language.isoen
dc.publisher.institutionCity University of Seattle (CityU)
dc.rightsAttribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 United States
dc.rightsopenAccess
dc.rights.urihttp://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/us/
dc.subjectmedical assistance in dying
dc.subjectdying
dc.subjecteuthanasia
dc.subjectend of life
dc.subjectcounselling
dc.subjectexistential
dc.subjectmeaning
dc.subjectdignity
dc.subjectsuffering
dc.subjectacceptance
dc.subjectCanada
dc.subjectdecision making
dc.subjectpsychosocial
dc.subjectpalliative
dc.subjectchronic illness
dc.subjectterminal illness
dc.subjectgrief
dc.subjectinstitutional trauma
dc.subjectinterventions
dc.subjectneeds assessment
dc.subjectscope of practice
dc.titleAt the Threshold: Supporting Individuals Considering and Pursuing Medical Assistance in Dying (MAiD)
dc.typeCapstone
thesis.degree.disciplineCounselling
thesis.degree.grantorCity University of Seattle (CityU)
thesis.degree.levelMasters
thesis.degree.nameMaster of Counselling
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