TALK IS CHEAP
The first week in May is Mental Health Week — an annual event, in the words of the Canadian Mental Health Association, “to learn, talk, reflect and engage with others on all issues relating to mental health.”
Sounds good. After all, thanks to awareness campaigns like Mental Health Week and Bell’s Let’s Talk Day in January, we’re all starting to become more sensitive to the factors affecting our psychological well-being. The longstanding stigma related to depression and other mental-health issues is starting to disappear.
Unfortunately, without concrete action, all the talk in the world isn’t enough to help people who are really suffering. It certainly wasn’t enough to save Kye Ball, 16, who took his own life on March 20 in his Indian Head home.
For three years, Kye’s parents talked about their son’s mental illness with anyone who they thought could help. From the age of 13, when he could no longer hide the self-inflicted cuts on his arms, he saw social workers, counsellors and psychiatrists, repeatedly spending time in the hospital, only to be released when he promised to stop harming himself.
Individually, the health-care professionals Kye encountered in the months leading up to his death did the best they could to help him battle his demons. But as the Regina LeaderPost’s Pam Cowan reports in her feature story today, their good intentions were undone by a system that is understaffed, under-resourced and, increasingly, underfunded.
It’s a story that’s all too familiar to patients in need of mental health services in this province. According to statistics from the CMHA, Saskatchewan ranks near the bottom in Canada when it comes to funding for mental health. And as the provincial government struggles to dig out of a $1.3-billion deficit hole, that sorry statistic isn’t likely to change any time soon.
In a guest column earlier this month, University of Saskatchewan clinical psychology grad Jeremy Cheng made a persuasive case for investing more money in mental health. Even in a time of austerity, money spent now on supports for vulnerable people — an ounce of prevention, as it were — would result in much bigger savings in terms of health care, productivity, policing and other downstream costs.
It shouldn’t be a dollars-and-cents issue, of course. When we read about everything Kye Ball’s family went through, up to and including his horrific suicide five weeks ago, it’s hard not to agree with his mother Wanda’s assertion that the system in this province is broken.
So by all means, let’s continue talking about mental health. But let’s also make sure we, as taxpayers, are prepared to put some money where our mouths are.