Canada's mental health crisis

Jun 24 2008

No one is safe from mental illness; it strikes without regard for age, gender, or social status. And even though one in four Canadians suffer from a mental illness, it remains a stigma, shrouded in misconceptions.

On Friday, June 20, The Globe and Mail launched "Breakdown: Canada's mental health crisis," a week-long series that examines the toll that mental illness takes on Canadians, their families and their colleagues, and on the nation's economy and health-care resources. The multi-media project includes documentary footage that will appear on www.globeandmail.com/breakdown, with personal narratives by mental health sufferers, commentary and analysis from Canadian experts working in the field, and photo galleries featuring the work of Globe photographer Charla Jones.

The series starts with a sad portrait of a woman who lived out most of her life in a Toronto asylum in the late 1800s. More than 100 years later, the mentally ill in Canada are still misunderstood and are still being warehoused -- though now, instead of being in "insane asylums," they can be found in hospital wards and prisons, or trapped in their own homes. Yet, even though the economic impact of mental illnesses is bigger than any other disease group, cancer included, Canada is the only western country without a national health-care strategy.

"Canada still doesn't have a coherent strategy for treating the mentally ill," said The Globe's Editor-in-Chief, Ed Greenspon. "As a country, we need to articulate and address mental health issues with a modern sensibility. If we don't, the consequences can be tragic and severe, for individuals who suffer, for their families, and for Canada."

Saturday's Focus section will be exclusively devoted to the topic and includes moving accounts by Globe senior writers Erin Anderssen and Carolyn Abraham. They chronicle the lives of a trial lawyer in New Brunswick who suffers from bipolar disorder and now lives with his aging mother, a 26-year-old Toronto man whose family saw him led away in handcuffs after schizophrenia caused him to suffer severe delusions, and a high-level Toronto accounting firm executive struggling to overcome crippling anxiety disorders. Over the week, Andre Picard, Dawn Walton and Elizabeth Renzetti will examine critical aspects of Canada's mental health crisis, including:

• How 70 per cent of people with severe mental illness are working, despite their illness;
• How one-third of general hospital beds are filled with mentally ill patients;
• How Canadian jails and penitentiaries have become a place to warehouse the mentally ill;
• The vicious circle of mental illness and addiction.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/