Governments and policy makers need to understand what the mental health battles are like
The picture says it all.
Alida Sask.’s Angela and Clayton Erickson stand on a pile of rubble which was once their countryside home. Their home, not to mention various buildings were destroyed by fire.
As is the case with some people, they didn’t carry any extra house insurance so trying to rebuild will be nothing short of miraculous.
While that all sounds devastating, that isn’t even their main concern: it is for their son Colton who is being held in jail charged with arson in regards to his parents’ devastating fire.
In a feature story by CBC journalist Bonnie Allen, the Ericksons’ story outlines all the roadblocks, setbacks and situations where they tried to get help for their son Clayton but were ignored. They were resigned to the fact this or something worse was going to happen.
The story which can be viewed at https://www.cbc.ca/newsinteractives/ features/catch-and-release-mental-healthsaskatchewan is meant to be a sympathy, woe-is-me story, the Erickson wanted to outline in detail what is going on with the treatment of mental health.
In our society’s sucks-to-be-you, U.S.inspired type of attitude, if you read the story, it sounds like the Alida couple did everything they could. Their story maybe is the story you are currently living or maybe it could be.
Mental health has come a long way. No longer are mental health issues treated as the work of Satan, ignored as poppycock or something that no one can understand and don’t know how to treat.
The work done by mental health experts has been extraordinary as has the efforts for mental health awareness.
However, what is needed is education: continued public education, but what we need now is increased education for health care professionals who aren’t dedicated to the mental health field, our emergency personnel such as our law enforcement and our medical personnel.
Our health care and emergency professional need to better education on understanding there are those out there who are suffering from mental illness. In the medical field who are able to prescribe medications especially have to understand how to diagnose or at the very least work better in collaboration with those who specialize in complicated mental illness diagnosis.
In the case of the Ericksons, they described their son’s treatment as “catch and release”. Get a diagnosis, hold on to the patient from doing any damage and then when the situation or episode is over, release the subject.
There are many reasons, perhaps it is that there are no places, I.e. not enough hospital beds, for the person to get further treatment and evaluation but their needs to be more collaboration, more dialogue amongst psychiatrists, psychologists and medical personnel.
That has to be the mindset if we want mental illness treatment to improve effectively and efficiently.
While many critics will say governments can’t keep blindly throwing money at health care, it doesn’t have to be this way. It comes down to government, the medical and mental health communities coming to together how to best treat patients through organization, cooperation and collaboration.
If it takes some extra dollars to make this happen, so be it. It is well worth it to help prevent cases such as the Ericksons’ and others like them (maybe even you) have reportedly gone through.
On her twitter account, CBC journalist Bonnie Allen indicated “It was very difficult for Angela and Clayton to share their story — but Angela said, “At this point, we have nothing to lose.’”
It is terrible it gets to that point where people feel they are at the point of no return.
There are a lot of people who hav suffered either personally or because of someone close to them’s mental illness and now that we have acknowledged mental health, mental wellness and mental illness, let’s stop, take a deep breath and figure out how to best utilize the limited funding that is out there.
Mental illness is devastating, sometimes you can’t see as the Ericksons’ tragically found out, often times, it goes undetected and is passed down through generations, either through genetics or the learned behaviour of those suffering and those around them.