Bless you, Andrea. Thank you for thinking of the country and having the strength and courage to speak up during an extremely painful time.
We have to be careful..., of course, not to exacerbate stigma or demonize those with mental illness. What Andrea has done beautifully here is to highlight a failing in our system that needs to be addressed.
We have to be careful..., of course, not to exacerbate stigma or demonize those with mental illness. What Andrea has done beautifully here is to highlight a failing in our system that needs to be addressed.
Suicides rates among the depressed in our country and among emergency personnel and soldiers with PTSD are staggeringly high. Not enough of our health care budget is allocated to mental health, some 1% where other countries allocate 10%. The cost to our economy of NOT dealing with this issue is $50 billion a year (that's 7 times more than the disease burden cost of infectious diseases). Our prisons are packed with offenders that have substance abuse issues and/or mental health issues (80% of males). According to several experts, prison conditions for the mentally ill are "grossly inadequate."
Harper has shown zero commitment in dealing with addiction and mental health. Quite the opposite. The Harper government fought the Insite Safe Injection facility all the way to the Supreme Court of Canada in spite of a decade of evidence and over 30 peer-reviewed studies showing that Insite saves lives and health care dollars, reduces disease transmission, and promotes entry into addiction treatment. This government has continuously underfunded mental health for the general population and even to our Veterans in need.
There's also a clear link between poverty and mental health. People in Canada's lowest income group are up to four times as likely to report poor mental health. Poverty affects three million Canadians and one in five children, one of the worst rankings in the OECD. Two thirds of homeless people report dealing with a mental illness. It's a national disgrace that the neglected mentally ill of our society sleep outside.
The extremely high 50 billion dollar externalized costs of ignoring addiction, mental health and poverty in Canada are borne by all of us. Increasingly the professionals on the front lines of this battle are not trained psychologists or social workers but police and prison guards.
Cpl. Nathan Cirillo tragically lost his life to someone who was clearly a mentally ill crack addict. We need to learn from the tragic events on Parliament Hill. Devoting more powers and funding to the "war on terror" or increased public surveillance, something the Harper government is clearly committed to doing, will have zero impact in preventing lone wolves who are not connected in any way to organized terrorist cells.
Turning our country into a fortress is a grossly expensive and ineffective strategy with no real world evidence of preventing terrorism. We need to focus our efforts on making Canada safer by focusing on prevention and making it a more humane and healthy place to live. That would be the wise and noble Canadian response to this tragedy.
Harper has shown zero commitment in dealing with addiction and mental health. Quite the opposite. The Harper government fought the Insite Safe Injection facility all the way to the Supreme Court of Canada in spite of a decade of evidence and over 30 peer-reviewed studies showing that Insite saves lives and health care dollars, reduces disease transmission, and promotes entry into addiction treatment. This government has continuously underfunded mental health for the general population and even to our Veterans in need.
There's also a clear link between poverty and mental health. People in Canada's lowest income group are up to four times as likely to report poor mental health. Poverty affects three million Canadians and one in five children, one of the worst rankings in the OECD. Two thirds of homeless people report dealing with a mental illness. It's a national disgrace that the neglected mentally ill of our society sleep outside.
The extremely high 50 billion dollar externalized costs of ignoring addiction, mental health and poverty in Canada are borne by all of us. Increasingly the professionals on the front lines of this battle are not trained psychologists or social workers but police and prison guards.
Cpl. Nathan Cirillo tragically lost his life to someone who was clearly a mentally ill crack addict. We need to learn from the tragic events on Parliament Hill. Devoting more powers and funding to the "war on terror" or increased public surveillance, something the Harper government is clearly committed to doing, will have zero impact in preventing lone wolves who are not connected in any way to organized terrorist cells.
Turning our country into a fortress is a grossly expensive and ineffective strategy with no real world evidence of preventing terrorism. We need to focus our efforts on making Canada safer by focusing on prevention and making it a more humane and healthy place to live. That would be the wise and noble Canadian response to this tragedy.
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