Is This The End of the Mental Health Commission?

By Marvin Ross

In December, I wrote a blog pointing out that the Mental Health Commission of Canada should be disbanded. Those of you who follow my writing on Huffington Post know that this has been a constant theme of mine over the past few years. Last Fall, the Federal Health Minister set up an inquiry into what they called Pan Canadian Health Organizations (PCHOs). These are federally mandated groups established to carry out specific tasks in health across the country when, in fact, health care comes under provincial rather than  federal jurisdiction.

The review was to evaluate the role and relevance of these groups in advancing federal health policy objectives and meeting national goals. One of the PCHOs is the Mental Health Commission and my advocacy colleague Lembi Buchanan and I submitted a brief on the Commission through the Best Medicines Coalition.

With amazing speed for a government report, the findings were just released. Much to our delight, the Commission recommended that the Mental Health Commission either be ended or radically altered.

The basic premise for health care in the 21^st Century as outlined by the World Health Organization and endorsed by most countries including Canada is that it be people centred. “It puts people at the centre of the health system and promotes care that is universal, equitable, and integrated. The framework emphasizes a seamless connection to other sectors, notably those focused on the social determinants of health. This framework also promotes providing a continuum of care that requires high-performing primary care.”

The conclusion the reviewers reached about the Mental Health Commission of Canada is that “Mental health is now “out of the shadows”. The integration of mental health care services into the core of Canadian health systems requires a different type of leadership, capable of driving a bottom-up approach in which patients and families, providers, researchers, and the broader mental health community come together to break down silos.”

As a positive, the report states that “The MHCC has been particularly effective in developing strategies around mental health, along with initiatives and campaigns to increase awareness and reduce stigma. It has made great strides in delivering on its objectives and helped to bring mental health “out of the shadows at last.” It has also created valuable contacts and built trust among its closest stakeholders.”

It did develop a mental health strategy mostly ignored and it did help to raise the awareness of mental illness. However, the report states that:

“The need to build greater capacity in Canada on mental health is still as pressing today as it was when the MHCC was established. What has changed, however, partly as a result of the advocacy work undertaken by the Commission, is the overarching policy goal. What Canada needs today is the complete and seamless integration of mental health into the continuum of public health care. What Canadians want is public coverage of proven mental health services and treatments, beyond physicians and hospitals. To be successful, those services must be integrated with primary care and supports for physical health, rather than isolated from them. We came to the conclusion that MHCC, in its present form and with its current orientation, is not the best instrument to achieve the objective of integrating mental health into Medicare.”

They then state that these goals might be achievable if the MHCC changed itself but suggest that to accomplish this they would have to engage “health leaders at provincial and territorial levels in joint decision-making over service funding and quality standards; a different “knowledge base” in support of evidence-informed advice and performance evaluation; and a different, more flexible, and less centralized structure.”

This, in fact, is one of the many criticisms I’ve made over the years. The MHCC churns out papers but has zero influence in decision making and that is exactly what is needed. Policy papers are fine but they need to be implemented and the MHCC has yet to accomplish that from what I’ve seen. The report concludes in its section on the MHCC that “It is because mental health is so critically important to Canadians- and their governments- that a new approach is now needed.”

I was impressed with the team tasked with this job and I’m impressed with the speed in which it produced its report (October 2017 to March 2018). Let us hope that the Health Minister implements the recommendations.

And, a documentary we did on schizophrenia