The Necropolitics of Psychiatric Euthanasia and Assisted Suicide (pEAS)

The thrust of this conceptual piece is to critique the State granting medical assistance in dying (MAiD) access to those whose sole underlying medical condition is a mental disorder through a necropolitical lens. First, I introduce Mbembe’s (2003) Necropolitics as this paper’s theoretical framework. Second, I argue how the State grants the psy-profession free rein to deploy its armory of necropolitical tactics to entangle the psychiatrized in its death-making, identity-devouring deathworlds. This paper will demonstrate how the MAiD process for pEAS keeps suicidal aspirants suspended in death-in-life involving silence, sacrifice, and stillness and waiting in protracted states of injury; additionally, it gives rise to a ‘necroeconomy’ demanding irregular mad body/minds be killed off so sane people can thrive and multiply.