Mental-health care: we can do better
The Montreal Gazette
Editorial
May 9, 2012
A pernicious sense of shame about mental illness and an underfunded and badly co-ordinated mental-health-care system have worked to create barriers to mentally ill Canadians getting the treatment they need.
The tragic result is that the one in five Canadians who suffer a mental-health problem are often left to struggle alone. Some end up in prison. Others become part of the homeless population. And a large proportion of the mentally ill are either unemployed or underemployed despite having marketable skills. Under the combined weight of mental-health costs and lost productivity associated with mental illness, the Canadian economy loses an estimated $50 billion a year, the Mental Health Commission says.
This week the commission, a national body created five years ago in the wake of a critical Senate report on mental-health care, issued recommendations for an overhaul of the country’s $14-billion mental-health-care system. They include an immediate addition of $4 billion a year to spending to get treatment to the estimated 6.7 million Canadians who suffer from mental illness. The commission also calls for, among other things, volunteer organizations to educate Canadians about mental illness and keep it in the public eye, in much the same way as has effectively been done for AIDS, heart disease and diabetes.
The report marks the first effort Canada has made to formulate a national strategy on mental-health care. We are the only G8 country without such a strategy.
For the revamp to succeed, Ottawa and the provinces must work together to identify priorities and act on them. Keeping the mentally ill out of the prison system should be a matter of urgency – as should housing the homeless mentally ill.
The commission also says there is a need for early identification and treatment of depression, one of the most common mental illnesses. According to the Canadian Mental Health Association, early diagnosis and therapy can mean the difference between debilitating illness and the ability to get back to regular activities.
Children and youth are identified as a priority. Between 10 and 20 per cent of young Canadians are affected by a mental illness or disorder, the CMHA says.
With the cost of mental illness to individuals and the country as a whole identified, the way should be clear to putting in place the services that mentally ill Canadians, and their communities, need.
LINK: Montreal Gazette
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