Having lived with bipolar disorder for seven years, I was intrigued by Prime Minister Harper’s announcement of plans to deal with the country’s mental health system. However, his freshly-appointed Mental Health Commission of Canada, and plenty of good intentions, are looking to fall short of what the millions of people dealing with mental illness in this country really need.
Stephen Harper says this new commission will help to erase the stigmas attached to mental illness. Make no mistake, the stigmas are terrible. Mental illness is often associated with objects of fear: homelessness, hospitalization and instability. And while it is true that education of mental illness will increase the chances of someone seeking out treatment, the last thing we need is another committee. We already have The Mental Health Promotion Unit (MHPU), which was created in 1995.
The MHPU was designed to be the central point of Health Canada’s efforts to raise awareness of mental illness. Stephen Harper could have easily put money into this unit, but in a politically-motivated attempt to distinguish himself from the Liberals of the 1990s, Harper has wasted millions establishing a new agency that does the exact same thing.
With this committee, Stephen Harper has also expressed an intention to standardize the level of care that people with mental illness receive. This is impossible. Mental health treatment varies widely in its nature and application; it ranges from simple counseling and cognitive behavior therapy, to long term hospitalization and heavy medication. Mental illness is incredibly varied in how it is presented and how it is treated.
Health care itself varies from province to province, and the availability of certain services varies from region to region. Someone with schizophrenia in a small fishing village in the Maritimes is less likely to receive the specialized care available in Toronto, Vancouver or Montreal. This is the case with cancer, heart disease, and pretty much every major health problem this country is facing. Specialists are hard to come by, as many doctors leave Canada for the United States. This committee does not provide Canada with more specialists, nor does it provide a way to place these specialists all over the country. As such, it does not address the fundamental reason why people with mental illness do not receive a standard level of care.
Prime Minister Harper’s intentions are good, and any light thrown onto mental illness is progress, but committees and commissions simply make recommendations. In this case, the recommendations were already made last year by a Senate committee. With a unit already in place to deal with the stigmas attached to mental illness, Stephen Harper is simply trying to make himself look good by creating this new agency. In using mental illness as a political tool, Harper mocks what we with mental illness go through, wasting a great deal of taxpayer’s money along the way.
