Ethics and Political Philosophy Interest Group (Nicolas Dunn, Lethbridge)

In this talk, Nicholas Dunn (University of Lethbridge) examines the current debate about expanding MAID eligibility for persons with mental illness as the sole underlying condition (MI-SUMC) through the lens of structural injustice. To this end, he develops the notion of structurally embedded suffering to consider how unjust social structures might reshape both autonomy and irremediability. Drawing on externalist frameworks from the philosophy of psychiatry, he argues that the structural embeddedness of psychiatric suffering poses significant ethical challenges for MAID policy.