Canadians deal with mental health issuesCALGARY HERALD
Deborah Tetley, CanWest News Service
Published: Saturday, September 01, 2007
Mental health centre set for Calgary
New national body aims to educate public
OTTAWA - Calgary will be the home of a $55-million national mental health commission whose goal is to reduce what Prime Minister Stephen Harper calls the "stigma" faced by patients.
Several sources confirmed the commission's headquarters will be based in Calgary. An announcement is expected next Friday.
Retired Liberal senator Michael Kirby, who will chair the commission, was coy Friday when pressed. He noted that he and federal Health Minister Tony Clement will hold a news conference in Calgary next Friday, and the inaugural board meeting will be held on Sept. 10 at the Hyatt Regency hotel.
"There has been no official announcement of it being headquartered in Calgary," Kirby said. "You can draw whatever conclusions you want from the fact that the first board meeting is in Calgary on Monday and that we are making an announcement on Friday in Calgary."
Both Judy Martin, executive director of the Canadian Mental Health Association's Calgary region, and Jodi Cohen, Alberta president of the Canadian Mental Health Association, said they have known for several months the commission will be anchored in Calgary.
The prime minister said many Canadians deal with mental health issues.
"We see mental health disease everywhere," said Harper, announcing the creation of the commission. "One in five Canadians will develop some kind of mental illness in their lifetime."
"These people have been left, just left, by most of society," said Judy Martin. "There is a lot of misinformation and fear out there, so changing attitudes and behaviours means changing our collective consciousness. But it's going to be a long road."
Martin estimates her association worked with more than 17,000 Calgarians last year on mental health issues ranging from clinical depression to schizophrenia and suicide.
Many of Calgary's mentally ill are homeless, experts say.
Although estimates vary, roughly 60 per cent of Alberta's homeless population are living with some form of mental illness, said Cohen.
Cohen said the commission's mandate to fight the stigma is a step toward addressing discrimination -- provided the appropriate resources are allocated by individual provinces.
"There are towns in Alberta with no psychiatrists," she said. "There are no resources, not enough beds and everyone is stretched. People aren't getting help."
The commission is composed of 18 people from across the country.
It was one of the recommendations of a 2006 Senate report on the state of mental illness care in Canada.
The report, co-authored by Kirby, said Canada is one of the few industrialized nations not to have a national health-care strategy for mental illness. It recommended a sweeping transformation and integration of what is now a disparate mix of ad-hoc services in different provinces.
The principal theme in Kirby's report was that the de-institutionalization of the mentally ill in recent decades has not been followed up by an adequate provision of services in community settings.
"We have to keep this issue out of the shadows and stop branding people," Kirby said. "We are going to start that long, evolutional process to change minds now, so that mental illness is no longer a defining characteristic."