Terminally-ill people who want to end their lives with the help of a doctor, and who have the means to do so, can travel to a handful of countries, notably Switzerland, for assisted dying procedures. Gradually, more countries around the world have begun to permit some form of assisted death. Politicians in a number of others, including Ireland, Scotland and France, are now seriously debating it.

In Canada, where medical assistance in dying (Maid) became legal in 2016, the government intends to extend eligibility to people whose sole reason for ending their life is mental illness. But that planned expansion, now twice delayed, is deeply controversial. In this episode of The Conversation Weekly podcast, we speak to a leading psychiatrist about the situation in Canada and why he’s a vocal opponent of the expansion.

And stay tuned to our international home page for ongoing coverage of the aftermath of the death of Iranian president Ebrahim Raisi and the country’s foreign minister Hossein Amir Abdollahian in a helicopter crash.