Guest Blog -Exploring the Latest Mental Health Sham Funding Announcement From the Canadian Government: The Youth Mental Health Fund

By Kathleen Mochnacki

On April 9th, I watched on CBC’s Power and Politics the Minister of Mental Health and Addictions, Ya’ara Saks announce a 2024 Budget proposal of $500 million dollars for a Youth Mental Health Fund to help younger Canadians. Here is the Press Release:  

Does this mental health fund include funding for “younger Canadians” who are experiencing their first psychotic break?  Will it ensure access to a psychiatrist, and an adequate hospital stay and supportive housing upon discharge?

The Press Release reads “And, because many of them are still in school or just starting their careers, they are more likely to struggle with the costs of private mental health care”.  Is the Minister not aware that we have Universal Health Care in Canada? Yes, psychologists need to come under Universal Health Care but we also need more psychiatrists who will treat serious mental illness.

The statement continues: “Through no fault of their own, Gen Z has inherited an expensive housing market, and a rising cost of living—both of which are causing unprecedented anxiety about their future. It is more important than ever that young Canadians get the support they need”.

Is the Minister aware that those with serious mental illnesses have faced a housing crisis since the beginning of de-institutionalization and that this crisis has been neglected for decades? The money that was to be saved from running the institutions was to go into appropriate community services like supportive housing but it did not.  In fact, 77% of homeless people have a mental illness according to research just published on April 17/24

The statement continues: “The new Youth Mental Health Fund will help community health organizations provide more care for younger Canadians, and better equip these organizations to refer youth to other mental health services within their networks and partnerships”. Would it not make more sense to open up more hospital beds, so “young Canadians” who are experiencing their first psychotic break can receive the medical care that they need? 

Instead many of those untreated “young Canadians” have entered the homeless population. I see them walking around talking to their voices on Yonge Street, sleeping in stairwells and begging for a plate of food at church breakfasts in the community where I live. 

No-one cares.

The Press Release states that this money is to go to community mental health organizations. While there are some knowledgeable and empathetic community workers, most “Community mental health organizations” have a track record of not attending to the most seriously mentally ill adequately. Ask family caregivers of those who are seriously mentally ill who have had their complaints continually dismissed. I have spent years pursuing resolution to my concerns. This is how it appears to work: Complaints are forwarded to the executive director, who may either ignore them or offer a defensive excuse.  Complaints are then forwarded to the Board of the organization who refer the complaint back to the Executive Director. Complaints are then forwarded to the local MPP who then forwards them to the Ministry which is usually followed by a message from the Ministry, some weeks later, that I need to express my concerns to the Executive Director.

Lack of Mental Illness Literacy.

According to The Honourable Marci Ien, Minister for Women and Gender Equality and Youth “The Youth Mental Health Fund is our commitment to making sure that their courage leads to the care they deserve. They’ve taken the first step; we’re making sure they’re supported for the next one.”

Does Minister Ien know that many with psychotic illness have the symptom of “anosognosia ” and are, therefore, not aware that they have an illness.  So why would they reach out and make “the first step”?  This lack of knowledge about serious mental illness among our leaders is unacceptable. It would seem that most mental health funding initiatives do not address the needs of the seriously mentally ill.

No Accountability.

Also included in this announcement is that the Federal Government will be  “Providing $14.25 million in annual funding to the Mental Health Commission of Canada, to advance mental health in the priority areas of suicide prevention, mental health and substance use, engagement with Canadians, and population-based initiatives which includes children, youth, and emerging adults“. 

In 2018, a report commissioned by Health Canada and conducted by Dr. Pierre-Gerlier Forest and Dr. Danielle Martin recommended that the Mental Health Commission of Canada be disbanded and can be found here. 

Why were tax dollars spent on a federal review of the Mental Health Commission of Canada in 2018 which recommended that this organization be disbanded only to have funding continue for years including this latest bump in money?

How will Outcomes be evaluated?

The Press Release did not explain how the outcomes of the services provided by this money will be evaluated. According to the Press Release,  the money is to go to improve the lives of “young Canadians” but what indicators will there be, to know that this outcome has been achieved?

This announcement of a Youth Mental Health Fund is another example of how our tax dollars are spent with no clear mandate, and no clear expectations set out.  Families of those with serious mental illness have been witnessing this phenomena for years.

The Minister Needs to Explain:

•  If this money is also to go to help “young Canadians” with serious mental illness?
• What is her knowledge of serious mental illness?
• Is she aware of the devastating effects on those with serious mental illness and their families incurred by  the policy of deinstitutionalization? 
• Does she see a connection of this poorly thought out policy and the current crisis in homelessness of many “young Canadians”?
• Would not some of the money be better spent on opening up hospital beds and allowing “young Canadians” to get appropriate treatment for their emerging psychotic illness?
• Given Ontario’s penchant for funding bureaucracies (e.g. The Centre of Excellence and the Establishment of a Mental Health and Addictions Ministry) rather than funding direct services, what guarantees do we have that this money will go towards youth in the Province of Ontario?
• Both the Fraser Institute and the Canadian Alliance on Mental Illness and Mental Health gave negative reports on the state of mental health services this year.  What components of these reports is this funding to address?

Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics

By Dr David Laing Dawson

Recently the NIMH announced that in the U.S. the prevalence of schizophrenia and related psychotic disorders is between 0.25% and 0.64%.

This implies that our assumption of a 1% and higher risk (and prevalence) has been wrong, or that, miraculously, progress has been made in the USA in the prevention of schizophrenia. Unfortunately, this also implies that we need not spend as much money or attention on this serious illness.

But, of course, it turns out those figures arose from something called household surveys: phone calls to a representative sample of American Households. That 0.25% to 0.64% does not include the homeless, the transient, and the institutionalized. To be included one needs to belong to a household with a phone.

I suspect those figures actually represent only about half of the people in the USA suffering from schizophrenia, those who have phones and households, bringing us back to 1% or more when we include the others.

I was reminded of this by Bill Maher’s recent anti-woke diatribe on Canada. Officially, as he points out, Canada’s unemployment rate is 6.1 % vs the U.S. At 3.8%.

Well, it turns out Canada’s unemployment rate has never been as low as 3.8%. Rarely has it been under 5 percent.

It is easy to find how these stats are “calculated”. Google tells us that we get this number by dividing the number of unemployed people by the total number in the labor force, then multiplying by 100. It is much harder to find out how the number of unemployed and the number in the labor (or labour) force is determined.

In the USA it is, once again, a monthly survey of 2000 households. In Canada the numbers also come from a survey, though I became frustrated trying to find out how big and what kind of a survey.

Maybe our numbers of unemployed are almost double those of the USA. I doubt it. The fact we have never been as low as 3.8% would seem to point to a discrepancy in the calculations, the means of surveying, and the validity of the survey. Again, in the US, the survey is of households with telephones. It excludes the incarcerated, the homeless, and the transient.

Bill does make a good point about extreme liberalism provoking the rise of the extreme and dangerous right wing. But this essay is more a suggestion that when quoting any “statistics” in the press or media we should include the many caveats and limitations that come with such figures, and how they are actually derived.

All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten

By Dr. David Laing Dawson

This clever little book was published in 1989 and is still going strong. And I was reminded of it last night while watching commentary on the Israel Hamas Gaza war, and the overnight missile and drone attacks by Iran, as I listened to pundits, commentators, military historians, retired generals, and politicians weigh in.

All men of course.

And what struck me from their interpretations, conclusions, advice and prognostications, was that they too learned all they need to know in kindergarten, or perhaps between JK and grade 4.

But unlike the author of the original book who took to heart the words of his teachers, these men, as boys, received their instructions on the school ground, in the yard, at recess, lunch time, and after hours.

There were a few moments when the speakers looked at the complexities of large masses of people governed by a hierarchy, with many ambitious men sitting precariously at the top with the level below them coveting their power, but mostly these countries were discussed as if they were single, large, sentient beings obeying the boy-rules of the primary school playground.

A “few” years ago a boy in grade 4 was regularly bullying some of my grade 2 classmates and I was the tallest of the boys in my class that year. So it happened that I volunteered, or was chosen, (I don’t remember how it came about) to fight this grade 4 boy. At recess a crowd gathered, creating a circle, a ring, and in that ring this boy and I squared off. I’m sure we tugged and pulled and pushed for a bit and then I got him down on the ground, with me on top, in control. But with a free hand he grabbed me by the throat and squeezed. I got off him and stood up. He left with his friends and never bothered my classmates again, and I was briefly a hero, though in reality I quit because he was choking me. And that was the first and last physical fight of my life, so far.

But at age 7 I was obeying the rules of human conduct espoused last night by those pundits on my television. And it did work in the school yard. The bully went away.

But surely to deescalate this situation in the mid east and move in the direction of a lasting peace we need to go beyond the wisdom and understanding of a 7 year old.

The decision makers in Iran, mindful of the ambitious cadre below them, responded as if in the school yard, tit for tat. But they know of Israel’s iron dome, it’s sophisticated systems. So they put on a show, a multimillion dollar barrage of missiles and drones, that would and did cause very little damage.

Leave it be. Israel and the US need not respond. The leaders of Iran don’t want to turn the mid east into an inferno. It was puffery, showing off, maintaining their politics.

Now it is Netanyahu’s time to be an adult, to leave behind the retaliation of the school yard, and work with whatever sane, adult world leaders he can find, to end this war.

Homelessness and the Failure of Government

By Marvin Ross

Over the past few months, we’ve done a number of blogs on the problems of supportive housing using a Christian charity (Indwell) as the example and published some research on how it operates by Karen Allin in Mississauga. Karen has no personal involvement with serious mental illness but she was concerned when Indwell wanted to build near her. She found my blogs and that concerned her about their competence. At the public meeting she attended, some of Indwell’s own residents came and complained about the failures of that organization.

And then I heard from another resident at Indwell in a building in Hamilton with complaints from that place. She and Karen conducted their own survey of residents and the results were not pretty. Karen’s report with those results I published last week.

Thus far, no one in any position of authority has shown any interest in looking into this situation despite Indwell getting about $123 million in financing from all levels of government and I’m not the least bit surprised. What impressed me about Ms Allin’s original report on Indwell is this statement: “Imagine the joy a potential tenant feels when they are told there is space for them in an affordable, supportive, housing apartment. As highlighted in this report, that joy quickly turns to a nightmare for many “

It turned out to be a nightmare for my wife and I when our son got a place at Indwell. We initially expected that he would have a nice place to live where, if problems arose, they would be taken care of. Problems continually arose involving violence (one murder), assaults, drug trafficking, to name a few that were never resolved.

What is happening at Indwell is not unique. There are no enforceable standards or oversight from government on how the tenants are cared for or how the grants are administered. As one comment on the last post on this topic said “All organizations that house individuals with mental health problems, etc. need to be held accountable, with transparent reports, financial statements, tenant feedback, etc.” 

That is not generally done because those with serious mental illness are the “ass end” of our healthcare system. Nobody in authority seems to care which is why we have the mess on our streets that we do. As statistics have shown, a considerable majority of those living on the streets have untreated mental illnesses. We do hospitalize people for as short a period as possible and then kick them out to the street with little or no follow up, no living arrangements and little money. They either fend for themselves or the families help to the extent they can.

It wasn’t always like this.

My blogging partner, Dr Dawson, commented in a recent e-mail to me that from his experiences as psychiatrist in chief at the Hamilton Psychiatric Hospital “We were doing the right stuff in 1975 : family involved always, had one team member assigned to each community agency to maintain communication and resolve problems. Prioritized the seriously mentally ill. 1985 started  special team to help transition from hospital to community. I think I always naively assumed progress would continue.” This is a longer review of how much we’ve deteriorated from the 1980’s to today

And what it takes to get proper medical care for a child with a serious mental illness was outlined recently in this blog by Dr Richard O’Reilly In that blog, Dr O’Reilly was discussing what it took Marlene Bryenton of PEI to rescue her ill son from the streets of Toronto. He said “families are often exhausted due to the effort needed to look after someone with a severe mental illness: particularly the effort sometimes required to ensure that a loved one stays on treatment. Family caregivers repeatedly tell me that they feel shunned and defeated by the system.”

He added, “The story of Andrew Bryenton demonstrates what I have always believed – that the mental health system will not meet its duty to provide appropriate care and treatment to people with severe mental illness until family caregivers come together and force it to do so.” The problem is that family caregivers are too exhausted to do that.

I’m fortunate that I live in a city that has a psychiatric hospital and even has a dedicated psychiatric ER but it takes all of our energy to ensure adherence to good medical practices. The senior bureaucrats know me well. There was one time when our son needed to be seen by the ER so I took him. That is not as simple as it sounds for the local psych ER is (or was) out of a 1950’s film, the Snake Pit. At one point, it was so bad that the medical school pulled all its resident docs out of there because of violence. I’m told it is now much better.

In order to get emergency psychiatric care, the patient first has to be cleared medically. The reason for that is a man with schizophrenia had pneumonia and his family doc sent him to the ER and called ahead. But, the ER staff knew him to have schizophrenia so made him wait for psychiatry even though he told them he was physically ill and had been sent there by his family doc. When he couldn’t breathe, he was given a paper bag to breath into as they assumed he was having a panic attack.

He arrested and died on the waiting room floor.

Now, all psych patients must be cleared medically which is sensible but then you have to convince the ER doc you want psychiatry. So, I take my son in and he gets checked by medical, they find no problem and try to discharge him. I then had to get into a shouting match with the doc so that he would be referred and we waited. No one came and they called psych again and again.

Finally, I could not wait any longer and told them I was leaving and ensured that they were aware my son was waiting for psych. Next morning, I called ER psych and they had never heard of him and refused to tell me where he might be (confidentiality you know). The switchboard told me he was still in the medical ER. Fortunately, I knew the VP of mental health services and her secretary arranged a search party and my son was found on a chair in the hall of the ER. He sat there in a psychotic state all night and no one noticed or asked why he was there.

My mention of lawyers at a meeting with hospital bureaucrats gets a lot of apologies but why did I have to even do that?

That wasn’t the first time I went head to head with them and it wasn’t the last but it leaves you exhausted. If families don’t do that, our adult kids suffer but when we do, it wears us down.

Imagine if you had a family member with cancer or some other serious and/or chronic condition and you had to do that as well. They don’t have to do that and we shouldn’t have to do that either. These are illnesses not moral failures and there are good treatments and supports but we mostly don’t get good treatment or good supports.

And God knows that we all want to take back our streets and parks from all the homeless who congregate there. Our society let this happen and society can correct it if only we properly fund treatment, rehabilitation, proper supportive housing, meaningful activities for people. Most European countries can do that. Instead, we literally piss away funds to groups like Indwell and all the other similar places to do what?

As someone in BC commented on last weeks blog,” I blame the government. Here in B.C., we used to have many properly staffed, licensed care facilities. Then the Provincial government decided to pass the Assisted Living Act, which allowed for the privatization of care facilities that would no longer require regular supervision to operate. All political parties were united in agreeing to this fiasco, so all are equally guilty of the disastrous housing shortage that ensued for many poor people — especially the mentally ill & the elderly who require regular, ongoing properly supervised care and other supports to live safely & with dignity in the community.

If anyone wants to see what is called here “the show’,” come to Vancouver & take a stroll by Hastings & Main. It is truly heartbreaking”

Just last week, the associate minister of mental health, Ya’a ra Saks, a yoga teacher among other qualifications, announced $500 million to youth mental health – not illness but health. The press release stated that: “It is critical that youth have what they need to build a happy, healthy start in their adulthood. Mental health care is an essential part of ensuring every young Canadians can reach their full potential, and that helps Canada’s economy reach its full potential, too.”

So what are they going to do to make youth happy? They don’t say but what will make many people happy is if we provide the resources to help those with serious mental illness. Stay tuned for more on this latest effort in uselessness from our government. .

Guest Blog Have the Supports Disappeared from Supportive Housing?

Karen Allin

The Housing First model is based on the theory that if homelessness is caused by a lack of housing, then provide people with immediate access to affordable, supportive housing. Supports need to address: mental and physical health, substance abuse, education, employment and general life skills.

Critical Characteristics of Supported Housing and Seeking Supportive Housing are two Canadian reports that provide more detail about the range of supports that residents are looking for. Some of the many supports mentioned in the reports include: 1) Support with independent living, such as cooking, cleaning, managing finances, and 2) Support in preventing and managing a crisis, such as developing relationships, anger control, avoiding unsafe situations, and coping after a crisis.

In theory, supportive housing sounds fantastic.

Indwell is a Christian charity providing affordable supportive housing. They have 27 buildings, with 9 more in the pre-development or development stages. Indwell houses over 1200 tenants.

In December 2023, Indwell held a public meeting after they purchased a vacant lot in Mississauga. At this meeting we heard from Indwell tenants saying they do not feel safe living at Indwell. Because of this meeting, I decided to do more research on Indwell and produced a report “A Look Inside Indwell”. In February, I wrote a guest blog: When Supportive Housing Becomes a Nightmare for Vulnerable Tenants.

After that meeting, my city councillor formed a working group with Indwell and some local residents. Although Indwell says they provide wrap-around supports, at this meeting Indwell said the main support they provide is affordability. If that is the case, then why does Indwell say they provide supportive housing? When asked about safety concerns, the response from Indwell was that it was just a few disgruntled tenants and that we did not hear from the many tenants who are happy living at Indwell.

In March, I created a survey for Indwell tenants. Another Indwell tenant from Hamilton helped to survey 46 tenants representing about 80% of her building. Here are some of the results.

At a Region of Peel Council meeting in February, Jeff Neven, the CEO of Indwell, told the councillors that Indwell is safe; safety is their utmost concern. Yet, 31 out of 46 Indwell residents, or 67% of the respondents said that they sometimes, rarely or never feel safe living at Indwell. Is this really just a few disgruntled tenants? Is the Christian charity lying about providing safe housing? Or, are the tenants lying about how safe they feel? The tenants have no reason to lie.

One tenant described that another tenant repeatedly threatened to kill her. She said she started using a buddy system when she had to leave her apartment. She informed Indwell staff about the threats and Indwell told her that he said he never threatened her. Indwell stated, “My advice when there’s conflicting information is to always take things with a grain of salt”. After he threatened her again, the response from Indwell was, “Your safety is important to us. … Because of confidentiality, I am unable to share what action we’ve taken as landlords to uphold this responsibility.”

The resident then went to see the Crown Attorney with the complaints. The Crown took action when Indwell did not and, as a result, the man plead guilty to three charges: 1) July 31, 2022 – Utter threat to cause death, 2), Oct. 4, 2022 – Failure to Comply with undertaking, and 3) Oct. 30, 2022 – Utter threat to cause bodily harm.

For over 3 months, this tenant did not feel safe in her apartment because of another tenant threatening to kill her. She said that during this time, she did not receive any support from Indwell. Yet Indwell says they provide wrap-around supports. Indwell says they stay with their tenants in difficult situations and they adjust the support accordingly. Again, do you believe the tenant or do you believe Indwell?

Furthermore, 21 of the 46 respondents stated they have been verbally or physically assaulted by another Indwell tenant. That is not acceptable. It does not appear that Indwell provides supports relating to anger management.

So what types of support does Indwell provide? At the Region of Peel meeting in February, Jeff Neven said that Indwell connects tenants with a doctor and helps tenants get ODSP. He also described if a tenant gets a new dog and that dog is a real barker, then staff help to remedy the situation. Is a barking dog the best example that he could think of? Or, is it a true example of the extent of support that Indwell provides?

Of the 46 survey respondents, 26 respondents, 57%, do not feel comfortable bringing their family to their apartment. Likewise, 26 tenants said they would not recommend Indwell to a friend. Along with the verbal and physical threats, tenants in this building have seen overdoses, deaths due to overdoses and even a murder. On Jan. 7, 2024, CHCH reported one Indwell tenant violently assaulted another tenant. Other residents are saying this was a drug deal gone bad. The man who was assaulted was left crippled, with brain injuries and he died shortly afterwards. This murder was the second at an Indwell building in Hamilton. According to the Hamilton Spectator “Hamilton’s Parkdale Landing was to provide safer supportive housing — but then a murder happened”.

The tenants shared their frustrations with how the buildings are managed. One tenant complained about finding feces in the washers and dryers. Additionally, there are many complaints about apartment unit takeovers, trespassers sleeping in stairwells, prostitution, and tenants doing and selling drugs in the building.

How is any of this supportive?

In the last couple of years, Indwell has received over $123 million in funding and forgivable loans from federal, provincial, municipal governments and Canada Mortgage and Housing (CMHC). Will someone in government hold Indwell accountable, suspend future funding for Indwell and do a full due diligence on Indwell, including if Indwell provides safe and supportive housing?

Before writing this blog, I asked Jeff Neven from Indwell for an interview. I even gave him the titles of potential articles, including: 1) A Christian Charity so Focused on the Heavens that They Cannot See the Violence in Their Buildings, 2) The Many Hypocrisies of Supportive Housing, 3) The Failures of a Housing First Model, 4) When Supportive Housing Creates More Problems than Supports, and 5) Christian Charity Begs for Forgiveness, After Years of Lying about Providing Safe Housing.

Teresa Howe, the Community Engagement Manager from Indwell responded:

“For 50 years we’ve been providing supportive housing that transforms lives. Each new door that we open is done together with many partners; each new home is a solution to homelessness. The safety and security of each tenant is important to us and we continue to work with both our tenants and partners to ensure safety and address concerns.”

What will it take for Indwell to see the light and realize that they are failing to provide safe and supportive housing? Mr. Neven, if you are reading this, I would still like to write the article “Christian Charity Begs for Forgiveness, After Years of Lying about Providing Safe Housing”.

Guest Blog: A Personal Account of Struggling with Schizophrenia

By Douglas James Brown with an introduction by Marvin Ross

Early on in my advocacy, I read the following op ed by Mr Brown that appeared in the Hamilton spectator. That was about 2005 and I was so taken with it that I got permission to have it reprinted in the website schizophrenia.

Mr. Brown is a survivor of our failed system for dealing with those with an illness of the brain. He ran into a problem with a callous hospital and an inept police department that almost derailed his life even further. Fortunately, both the Hamilton Spectator and I writing in the Huffington Post, helped with publicizing his injustices. Fortunately, he had a smart judge and good lawyers to help in his criminal trial and his suing of the hospital and police department. If you can, please read the Huffington Post link and the links it contains for his history which is not unique and is still a problem.

This is what he wrote in 2005 with his addition as of now:

Schizophrenia is a life of ups and downs
By Douglas James Brown

I have a disease known as schizophrenia.

Individuals with this disorder vary in their presentation of symptoms. For me, there are days when everything is detailed, scary and frightening, and there are days of seeing things moving around in my apartment that are not really there. There are days where I weep because my life is one big roller-coaster. There are days where extra medication is the only answer.

There are the days where I’ve been successful. Days in which I function and can make sense of my world and the books I read, such as school texts, are the days where life becomes full of zest and brilliantly wonderful.

Sometimes, however, I feel insecure, dazed and even frightened of people. Then there are the days where I need to take extra medication because of extra stress, which invokes voices and hallucinations. I even fear being alienated by people with or without the illness.

I have my ups and downs.

It is the evenings when I feel most vulnerable to the ghosts surrounding me. Sometimes they make me feel I am “crazy in the head.” These apparitions do not harm me; actually, they just move around and act like a group of people who live a life similar to mine.

However, the apparitions live in a different time frame, a different era. Really it is like a parallel world, and they do not really notice that I am around. The strange thing is, though, I notice them.

There are the crying days. On these days, I cry because I am all alone without many friends, and I lack social support networks. I also weep because I cannot function like other people, because I do not fit in, and because of the stigma associated with schizophrenia. I cry because I fear the voices may return when I am feeling “stressed out,” and I do not want them to come back.

Medication is a necessary form of treatment for schizophrenia. Individuals on medication respond differently. Some individuals may be over-medicated to the point of slurring words, or sleeping all the time, or even to the point of behaving like a zombie.

For me, medication works and is necessary. It makes me feel great. I feel a lot better on medication.

Although my medications generally work well with my body and mind, there are times I need extra medication such as chlorpromazine. When I hear voices or see the apparitions, I take the chlorpromazine and it helps rid my mind of those disturbances.

I would like to share that I have completed two credits from a nearby college and I plan on obtaining my Writing for Publication Certificate within the next year and a half.

My medications have helped keep me mentally healthy and stable so I can complete my course work.

Thanks to the doctors who have made my life much happier and better, I don’t at present experience many of the symptoms I’ve described in this article.

On medication I can now function like a regular human being and be successful in school and life.

If science didn’t provide the medications that we individuals with schizophrenia now have, society might still be isolating us into asylums where they used electroconvulsive therapy, lobotomies and insulin overdoses to free the schizophrenic person from his or her symptoms.

We with schizophrenia need to be thankful for scientific discoveries and continue to advocate further research so a cure for schizophrenia is found.

Today:

Now I can say I’ve put in hours of study to be in Honours and many years of study in Psychology and Criminal Justice. I’ve not received a B.A. Psychology like I wanted, but I’ve been able to collect some poetry over a few years and piece it together into a book along with a children’s book.

Collaborative Person and Family Centred Care – A video presentation.

I’m trying something new this week. Instead of a written blog, this is a video of a presentation given in March 2020 to Home on the Hill in Richmond Hill, Ontario by Dr Nick Kates. At the time, Kates was chair of the McMaster University Psychiatry and Behavioural Neurosciences Program (now retired) and a strong proponent of collaborative care.

Within this video is a brief presentation by Dr. Don Berwick on quality and safety in health care which Dr Kates has been influenced by for his own work. Berwick is terrified of the indignity and loss of influence that one often gets in health care.

One of the points that Dr Kates makes is to compare the excellent care and respect for patients at the local cancer care centre to other medical specialties. As an aside, my local psychiatric facility was recently completely rebuilt and the staff were very proud of it. Shortly after it opened, I was standing in the lobby with one of Dr Kates’ colleagues waiting to go a meeting. She looked around and said what a bleak horror the building was.

She mentioned that she had recently been in the UK and went to a hospital to visit someone in the cancer ward. She got lost and found herself in a very attractive and welcoming lobby brightly painted and with art on the walls. She was approached by a volunteer to offer her help and that is when she discovered she was in the psychiatry unit. “That is how this place should have been designed” she told me.

In an article on the new building, Dr Dawson upset the senior staff when he wrote:

“For all its high tech conveniences, world-class gym, and earthquake resistance, it is a terrible design. Long narrow corridors, disorienting arrangement, small cubicles, white walls, institutional furnishings, locked doors. Yes, it is clean and patients have their own bathrooms. But all the rest stimulated my own fear/aggression response.”

Dr Kates presentation is a little less than one hour and you can fast forward through the introductions.

Enjoy https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lNhrioNmHQE&t=257s

Guest Blog: A Mother’s Plea to Canadian Researchers

By Kathleen Mochnacki

Surveys to obtain information from family caregivers of those with severe mental illnesses can provide an opportunity to get genuinely useful information about significant problems that family caregivers encounter in trying to get appropriate help for their family members or themselves

Such surveys need to recognize how the lack of appropriate mental health services affects our loved ones, how unrealistic mental health legislation affects whether our family members gets treatment or not and the attitudinal barriers that can prevent needed communication between mental health professionals and family caregivers.

Family caregivers of those with severe mental illnesses are a unique community who have experienced first hand what it is like to live under the same roof as a family member with a severe mental illness. Dr. E. Fuller Torrey founder of the Treatment Advocacy Center has said that the only people that know about psychosis are the person with the psychotic illness or a person who lives under the same roof. He had a sister who had schizophrenia. Sadly, when mental health services are planned, we are not consulted and costly mistakes are made.

Not much attention is given to the fact that many homeless people have untreated mental illness. Currently, York Region has engaged York University to conduct research in York Region Ontario. The goal of this research is to include the engagement of community residents/groups, faith-based organizations, service providers, and government representatives to identify important and feasible strategies to support mental well-being of residents in York Region.

My son lives in one of the areas selected for this research. This area includes a drop in for homeless people with mental illness, an encampment, transitional housing for homeless youth, both supportive and supported housing for people with a mental illness, and not for profit and co-operative housing. Drug activity is rampant. Many drug users have untreated severe mental illness. Reliable witnesses have observed people walking around in full psychosis. The local bank locks its doors at night to prevent homeless youth from sleeping in the area where bank machines are.

Yet there is not a word of this reality in the draft of the project which was presented on February 28th. I did bring this to the attention of the researcher who did listen. I also expressed my fervent wish that there be effective communication between our hospitals and community agencies when discharging patients with severe mental illnesses so that there is a smoother transition when people are discharged to community agencies. Family caregivers often have to straddle the divide between hospital and community waiting for the community agency to do an assessment on their recently discharged family member. I was grateful to the researcher for her gracious attention to my input and pray that that my observations will be included in the final draft.

I am not alone in my observations. Marilyn Baker, a mother of a son with schizophrenia, experienced the horror of her son being discharged in the middle of the night during freezing weather from a Toronto Hospital. She states: “This was when I learned that our mental healthcare system is a cruel joke – a patchwork quilt of people not talking to other people”. She exclaims: “No one is ever charged with negligence or failing to provide the necessities of life. These are just the mentally ill. They do not count”. (Readers are invited to read Marilyn’s blog which appeared earlier in this space).

Susan Inman, author and mother of a daughter with schizophrenia, suggested the following questions for future surveys in the hopes that the answers would support the need for systemic changes:

• Would improved public mental illness literacy campaigns have helped you better manage your family members emerging severe mental illness? Would these kinds of campaigns help you now in interactions with a wide variety of people?
• To what degree were various clinicians helpful when you reached out for help?
• Were some interactions with professionals more harmful than helpful – if so, in what ways?
• What kinds of gaps in services do you see?
• Did your family member have adequate psycho-education about their illness? If not, did this lack of information impact their ability to accept, adjust to and learn to better manage their illness?
• Did your family member receive any messages within the delivery of mental health services that undermined their belief in the value of medically based treatments? What were these messages and how were they delivered?
• Do you know that the current national curriculum on training peer support workers doesn’t include any information about disorders like schizophrenia?
• Do you think that knowledge about this disorder would help peer workers provide better help?
• Did you know that the current training emphasizes that people must also choose if they want any treatment in order to “recover”?
• Do you think that differently trained peer workers could help people come to a better understanding of involuntary treatment they may have received?
• Discuss your experience with peer workers.
• How helpful were any system-supplied family support workers with whom you had contact?
• Have you been concerned about the trend to combine programs and supported living for people with just a severe mental illness with those who are struggling with a concurrent disorder?
• Have you been in contact with service providers who didn’t seem to have an adequate knowledge base about schizophrenia?
• Did your service providers educate you or your family member about common cognitive losses associated with schizophrenia?

Susan also mentions the important evidence supporting the use of trained family care givers who deliver psycho-education to families in the NAMI created Family to Family programs in reducing relapses and in improving families well-being.

Family caregivers need to take part in research design to really capture the reality of the world that we live in. If we were to be involved in creating questions that would reflect the gaps in the system, then it may help bring around much needed changes that would really help our loved ones with serious mental Illnesses. It would be wonderful if Academia could make use of our expertise. If they did, we would have a mental health system that would be more efficient in helping our family members.

Attacking Cultural Events – Further Growth of Anti-Semitism

By Marvin Ross

The Playhouse Cinema in Hamilton Ontario is the latest organization to punish Jews because of Pro-Hamas demonstrations against the war in the Middle East and it is discriminatory and despicable. The Hamilton Jewish Federation had arranged to hold its Jewish Film Festival in April at the Playhouse back in December according to the cinema. On March 19, the cinema cancelled the event via e-mail to its subscribers. Their reason:

“After receiving numerous security and safety related emails, phone calls, and social media messages, the Playhouse Cinema reached a difficult decision to postpone the Hamilton Jewish Federation’s venue rental. On Saturday, March 16, our decision to postpone this venue rental was reached amid security and safety concerns at this particularly sensitive time. “

I grew up at a time when discrimination was common in this country. Jewish doctors could not get accreditation at hospitals which is why the Mt Sinai exists. There were quotas on how many Jews and other minorities could get accepted into certain university faculties, resorts discriminated, and, in Hamilton, Jews could not buy a house in the Westdale district of that city.

I’ve been proud that we advanced beyond that bigotry and have become a mostly multi-cultural open and accepting society. Until now. Imagine trying to go to your place of worship as is happening in Vaughan and finding it surrounded by screaming demonstrators (many masked) shouting Intifada and “From the River to the Sea” and blocking entrances. Then, according to reports, following worshippers home while the police look on and do nothing.

At least Mayor Del Duca of Vaughan is bringing in legislation to prevent gatherings at religious sites in his town.

The decision by the Playhouse is just the latest in a string of discriminatory actions against Jewish citizens. Aurel Braun, a University of Toronto professor of politics and international relations said that this is “an act against the Jewish community”. Hamiltonian, Victoria Mancinelli writing in the Toronto Sun, said the cancellation of a Jewish Film Festival is a cancellation of the Jewish people. She added that it is “a targeted campaign of harassment and intimidation met with irresponsible silence by our elected representatives and other equity groups.”

Meanwhile, most of the voluntary staff at a small literary magazine, Guernica, quit because the editor published an essay by an Israeli translator. The essay was pulled from the magazine but is still archived if anyone wishes to read it.

The Jewish American rapper, Matisyahu, had two shows cancelled for fear of protests and a walkout by theatre staff. Two Jewish Canadian artists, the Likht Ensemble, lost gigs because of October 7 and two Jewish festivals that normally get government grants were refused this year. In Victoria, the Belfry Theatre cancelled a production of a play called the Runner for safety reasons. The play deals with an Israeli emergency responder who makes a snap decision to give medical treatment to an Arab girl instead of a member of the Israel Defense Forces.  That play was also cancelled in Vancouver when the Push Festival consulted with a Palestinian artist in London.

Palestinians have fared no better. The Forward, a New York City Jewish newspaper founded in Yiddish in 1897, put forth a long list of cultural events that have been cancelled around the world involving both Jewish and Palestinian artists. The paper cited PEN America, a nonprofit promoting free expression, stating that “the voices of writers and others should not be stilled or silenced.” 

We cannot let this war, started by Hamas with the murder and rape of innocent victims, lead to a resurgence of a highly discriminating state that Canada was in the not too distant past. Sadly, our elected officials in Ottawa made a total spectacle of themselves debating a meaningless motion by the NDP calling for a total ceasefire and a recognition of a Palestinian State. The NDP ignored that what most call for is a negotiated two state solution that guarantees Israel’s existence. Hamas and the other Islamists want to see the destruction of Israel and the death of all Jews (per the Hamas charter). Some of the NDP went so far as to wear keffiyeh, a scarf popularized as a symbol of armed Palestinian resistance. This is in violation of House of Commons rules against wearing symbols in what is supposed to be a neutral space. They should have been but were not sanctioned.

Heather Mackenzie, who introduced the motion, quoted the Palestinian poet Refaat Alareer who was killed in the Israeli bombing saying  ‘If I must die, you must live to tell my story.’ She ignored his twitter reply about a report of a baby being found baked to death in an oven on October 7 of “with or without baking powder”. One commentary on the debate referred to it as a circus and pointed out that the mover of the motion actually claimed that “Hamas is a terrorist organization and it is not the government of Gaza”. It is a terror group and it is the government of Gaza. She got 50% of it right at least.

Sadly, in war, innocent people die. It is regrettable but unavoidable although we have no way of knowing what the real death rate is. How many of the dead are Hamas fighters is ignored. Still, many quote what Hamas claims as gospel. According to Abraham Wyner, a Professor of Statistics at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, “The numbers are not real”. His explanation is detailed and I recommend that people read his analysis.

As columnist Warren Kinsella wrote, during World War Two, we did not take the casualty figures put out by the German Doctors’ League, so why should we accept the figures put out by a health agency run by a terrorist organization.

We need to protect our public gatherings from the violence of demonstrators and we need our political leaders and the public to oppose racism wherever it occurs, and against all groups. If we continue to ignore it, we will be back to the intolerant society that we once were. We will be back to the “None is Too Many” position of accepting refugees fleeing Hitler and the St Paddy’s Day Parade will be cancelled again. It was banned for 100 years in Toronto because of fighting between Catholics and Protestants in a city run by the Loyal Orange Order.

Senator Katie Britt, Just an Old-Fashioned Politician

By Dr David Laing Dawson

I think we have always expected our politicians to lie, but usually through exaggeration, omission, avoidance, associations that suggest causation, and feigned emotion. And that’s what Katie Britt did in her rebuttal to Joe Biden’s State of the Union address.

She feigned outrage and fear and sorrow in a rather burlesque fashion. She omitted dates and times and geography in her stories, and managed, in the sequence of her telling, to create false associations. But she didn’t fully confabulate, invent and deceive.

Which is where I’m going with this thought.

I don’t remember our politicians, at least those in our democracies, confabulating, plain lying, as much as they do today. And getting away with it. And maybe, like many things happening today, the cause lies within our digital technologies, our internet, our social media.

When Joseph Goebbels said that if you repeat a lie often enough it becomes the truth, he and Adolf were performing within a fascist state, with the absence of a free press and fact checkers. No one else was getting equal airtime.

But now, even within a functioning democracy, with a free press and fact checkers, his words have become prophetic. For a lie, a big outrageous lie, can be repeated endlessly, and heard by all. It can be presented with outrage, with pomp, with music, and comforting or disturbing visuals. It can be podcast, re-posted, re-tweeted, and it can even be monetized.

So now some politicians are no longer bothering with omission, exaggeration, and mere association. They simply and boldly invent, lie, and confabulate, over and over.

And though, to quote another politician, “You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can not fool all of the people all of the time.”, Donald Trump doesn’t need all of the people, only sufficient electoral college votes to give him a win.

The only answer to this, that I can think of, is that for democracies to survive, we need our education systems to keep pace with digital technology. And I don’t mean we all need to learn about and fully understand this technology, I mean we need a larger percentage of our populations fully educated, educated in critical thinking, history, governance, geography, biology, public health, and science. Otherwise they will be misled by the fictions concocted by autocrats and tyrants, psychopaths and zealots.