Promising plan
Brian Hodder: For a long time, there was a definite stigma attached to a diagnosis of mental illness and, while this attitude is still prevalent in some areas, there has been a growing awareness in recent years that mental illness can affect any of us and that we need to treat it with the same respect and compassion that we extend to physical illness.
In the many years that I’ve worked with people living with mental illness, I have seen a lot of changes.
For a long time, there was a definite stigma attached to a diagnosis of mental illness and, while this attitude is still prevalent in some areas, there has been a growing awareness in recent years that mental illness can affect any of us and that we need to treat it with the same respect and compassion that we extend to physical illness.
While the awareness and shift in attitude are important steps in determining about how we deal with mental illness, we are still left with a system, infrastructure and programming that is seriously lagging in meeting the growing needs around mental illness that exist in this province; there is now hope that this may be about to change.
In the midst of the latest uproar over the Muskrat Falls project last week, Premier Dwight Ball and Health Minister Dr. John Haggie held a news conference at The Gathering Place in St. John’s to announce their plan to address the needs of the mental health system in this province. In response to the report provided by the All-party Committee on Mental Health and Addictions presented to them in March, the province has accepted and plans to tackle all 54 recommendations in the report. While there are a lot of moving parts and some details remain to be worked out, they plan to have some actions started on all of the recommendations within five years, and there will be significant changes begun within a year.
One of the changes I feel will have a major impact is the plan to move the majority of services out of institutions and into the community. One of the main elements of this plan is the creation of walk-in clinics in which patients can access counselling services immediately instead of having to wait at the Waterford Hospital in St. John’s for help or being placed on long wait lists until a counsellor in the community can see them.
A person experiencing an acute incident of mental health or a crisis should not be expected to wait months to see someone for help and be expected to cope until then on their own; this is not only unrealistic, but cruel and dismissive, and many times leads to alternate coping measures such as substance use, which exacerbates the problem and can create larger issues — including involvement with the justice system and potentially incarceration.
Along the same line of thought, one of the first changes to be implemented will be the handover of health services
“One of the changes
I feel will have a major impact is the plan to move the majority of services out of institutions and into the community.”
within prisons from the Department of Justice and Public Safety to the Department of Health and Community Services. Considering the large number of people in our prisons who are living with mental health and addictions issues, this should ease their transition back into the community and do away with a system in which they receive one level of service for their illness while incarcerated and a different level when released.
Having an equal and consistent level of service for mental health both within and outside our prisons is an important step in providing the rehabilitation which our justice system is intended to provide, and should reduce the incidences of re-offending.
Perhaps the biggest impact of the decentralization of services around mental health will be felt in rural areas of the province, as there will be more services available there. I have heard countless stories from people who say that they had to move to St. John’s because that was where all the services were. It shouldn’t be this way, as mental health issues exist all over this province and people do best when they are surrounded by family and those who support them.
While I will wait to see how this plan plays out, I am optimistic that our government is finally headed in the right direction when it comes to the treatment of mental illness in this province.