Public Policy
It’s being called a silent crisis, a sleeper issue. But there are signs that this sleeper is at last awakening. Around the world studies, surveys, web networks, journals and newspaper articles are shedding light on a shadowy subject: men’s mental health.
Welfare Incomes 2005 estimates total welfare incomes for four types of households in each province and territory, for a total of 52 scenarios. The four household types we use are a single employable person, a single person with a disability, a lone-parent with a 2-year-old child, and a two-parent family with two children aged 10 and 15. The National Council of Welfare has published similar estimates since 1986.
Over the past year, the Standing Senate Committee on Social Affairs, Science and Technology has received more than two thousand submissions from all across Canada on the subject of mental health, mental illness and addiction. Hundreds of Canadians shared heartbreaking stories that revealed to the Committee the true state of Canada’s mental health, mental illness and addiction “system.” The members of the Committee have come to recognize the reality that profound change is essential if persons living with mental illness are to receive the help they need and to which they are entitled. We trust that readers of this report will reach the same conclusion.
Over the past year, the Standing Senate Committee on Social Affairs, Science and Technology has received more than two thousand submissions from all across Canada on the subject of mental health, mental illness and addiction. Hundreds of Canadians shared heartbreaking stories that revealed to the Committee the true state of Canada’s mental health, mental illness and addiction “system.” The members of the Committee have come to recognize the reality that profound change is essential if persons living with mental illness are to receive the help they need and to which they are entitled. We trust that readers of this report will reach the same conclusion.
If waiting for health service in general is difficult, waiting for psychiatric service is especially trying. For most of us, the worry of “losing your mind” is the greatest fear of all. Receiving a timely consultation and the knowledge that help is on the way are an enormous boon. It is equivalent to the relief experienced when treatment finally begins for any other serious health condition. For this reason, the Canadian Psychiatric Association (CPA) has identified appropriate clinical benchmarks for what the waiting time for psychiatric care should be. If clinicians do not establish appropriate targets themselves, then no service can be evaluated against good clinical criteria.
In this paper, CMHA starts the discussion of bridging from Out of the Shadows to a national strategy by proposing components of a more coherent approach that uses the recovery vision in Out of the Shadows as a unifying thread to connect all the pieces, and develops a theoretical framework that distinguishes services and supports throughout the document, highlighting determinants of health and other community-based approaches (such as the role of NGOs) outside the realm of formal government services. We present these key recommendations, along with examples of related gaps in the Out of the Shadows report, and some specific suggestions for action.
Canada is the only advanced industrial country that does not have a national strategy or plan on mental health. As a result, people in Canada suffer unnecessary disability and mortality from mental illness, addictions, and poor mental health, and system costs continue to rise. One in five people in Canada experience mental illness and are dependent on support from their families, communities, the economy, and a stretched social service system. This paper explains why a national mental health strategy is urgently needed.
In Toronto on January 29th – 31st, 2006, the CMHA National, the Canadian Association for Community Care and the Canadian Home Care Association, held a Policy Forum on Home Care and Mental Health. This Forum brought together key stakeholders from governments, service providers, consumers of mental health services, families, health professionals and community-based organizations for discussions that will advance the policy agenda for mental health home care.
This 2006 discussion paper by the Global Business and Economic Roundtable on Addiction and Mental Health provides direction on how to implement a plan for dealing with mental illness when it manifests itself in the workplace.
Early in 2003, the Government of Canada’s Policy Research Initiative launched an interdepartmental project to investigate the relevance and usefulness of social capital as a public policy tool. This report presents a synthesis of the main conclusions and key insights learned during the course of this project. It also proposes some possible approaches for the use and integration of social capital in the Canadian policy (and research) agenda.
