That was a tragic story. Unfortunately mental illness does not get the coverage and funding that it should.

Did anyone catch The Current on CBC Radio 1 both last Friday and yesterday? Both shows were dedicated to mental illness - and both were excellent. I especially appreciated how candid Steven Page (formerly of the BareNaked Ladies) was.

Go to www.cbc.ca/thecurrent/episode/ and check them out if you haven't already.

These things raise our awareness of systemic discrimination against those with mental illness. Not only do they lack care in general, but what care they have is drug therapy. Common seems tells us that like all people, those living with mental illness can benefit from other types of therapy, and access to health care for ailments that all people get, including those living with mental illness.

Part of the problems is that there are few advocates for the rights of people with disabilities of any kind.

Well said Alex.  There is a huge problem of lack of resources to treat and support folks who sadly have severe and persistent mental illness.  While many gains are being made, there is still a grave lack of funding. 

It does need to be recognized that despite the recent upsurge of stories in the news, most people who experience mental illness are not violent.   Nor are most violent people mentally ill. 

It is also very difficult to treat some people with mental illness because of the illness itself - they are hard to track, house, cooperate with, heal.  I know.  I have family instances of schizophrenia and a few other things. 

So yes - we certainly don't have the resources in place to meet the needs.  But some things have been tried unsuccessfully even though there was great hope put into it.

It is also very difficult to treat some people with mental illness because of the illness itself - they are hard to track, house, cooperate with, heal.  I know.  I have family instances of schizophrenia and a few other things. 

So yes - we certainly don't have the resources in place to meet the needs.  But some things have been tried unsuccessfully even though there was great hope put into it.

"What are the churches doing about it?" would be a valid question for this board. How do we handle issues of mental illness if/when they come up in our congregations? Do we sweep those people under the rug as nuisances or try to bring them into our circle in some meaningful way?

To my delight (for personal reasons which I can't go into further), our minister devoted a whole service to mental health including a moving talk from a woman in our congregation who is wrestling with her relationship to a man with bipolar disorder. The questions above were the sorts of things he was trying to get us thinking about.

The most telling moment was when he asked people to raise their hands if they or someone close to them had had mental health issues. Almost every hand went up (there were maybe 30-40 people there that Sunday).

Mendalla

Mark Vonnegut.

On his book, The Eden Express.

Google excerpt of The Eden Express.

Sadly, I can bet there are many churches where mental illness has not been spoken about from a pulpit.

I disagree. Depression is a significant issue among members of the Order of Ministry. While there is still a stigma attached to mental illness, it is talked about, at least around here.

Or he refused help, as is his right, unless he is a danger to himself.

I refer to the merntal health system as the poorest cousin in the health care clan and the poorest child of that family is child and adolescent mental health.

DKS - are you meaning that depression is talked about among ministers or from the pulpit?  I think this would be two very different things. 

Yes, there is stigma attached to mental illness, I'm wondering what reactions a minister would get if they openly shared there own mental illness with the congregation.  It would take a very brave soul to do that I think.

At our church we had a special service for mental health.

It was very moving - with our minister giving a witness (what we call a sermon) on his depression resulting from him questioning his faith.

We also heard from a member of the congregation - witnessing to us on his struggle with bi-polar.

He asked the congregation to raise their hands if they had - or were- suffering from a mental illness.

About one in twenty raised their hand.

He then asked those who had a family member or friend who suffered from a mental illness - about  90% raised their hand.

I remember the Bible reading was about Legion (we are called Legion because we are many -paraphrasing).

It was so then, and it is so now.

I think that sometimes the problem is that mental illness isn't  apparent at all times.

When a person is in a wheelchair it is obvious that they have a mobility problem.

I remember when I broke my leg how considerate and sympathetic folks were.

It wasn't often the case when I had a depressive episode. Outwardly there wasn't always an indication - I soon realised if I wasn't handling things well it was better to let others know.

Sometimes the problem is fear.

When I spent some time in hospital some of the patients were having psychotic episodes- either from schizophrenia or bi-polar.

It was frightening. I can well understand why folks choose to avoid -and leave it to others to try and remedy the situation. It's not the right solution, but to some extent, it's a normal human reaction.

I'm wondering if there is a cultural difference between Aussies and Canadians here?

Mental illness is discussed quite openly here in Oz now - it wasn't the case back in the 1970's when I was first diagnosed. Folks will discuss  what medication works for them etc....

Conversely, when I was in Canada last year I could see that LGBT issues are more in the open than they are in Oz.

I was in Toronto when Pride Week was on - and I was taken aback when I saw two middle-aged guys holding hands in the street. That just doesn't happen here.......

I hasten to add I thought that it was fine - just something I was unaccustomed to seeing.

Sadly, homophobia does still exist in Canada. One of my best friends is bi-sexual. She comes from a small town and has told me that she would not be able to walk the streets there holding hands with a girlfriend.

I have another friend who is a cross-dresser - and you should see some of the looks we get when we walk around town. He works for the government - and is very afraid of what would happen if he wore woman's clothing to work (although it shouldn't really matter much since he never has to do deal with the public - only with fellow government workers).

Both. We even have a specific Sunday focussed on mental health. But that's not universal.

The story of the death of Ryan Russel was very tragic but I don't think we cna jump to the conclusion that the man arrested is mentally ill.

I think that the public often does that because it makes sense.

And yet it also adds to the stigma that mentally ill people are dangerous.

He may be, he may have been drunk, he may have been on drugs, he may have been on a vendetta against snow ploughs.........  Only timne will tell if he is mentally ill.

However, i agree that there is a big stigma.  People arent' afraid to tell someone they have cancer or diabetes but they are afraid to tell they are depressed or bi polar or ........

In Toronto there is actually a pretty good facility.  The old Queen Street Mental hospitla is under going a massive rebuilding program.  An entirely new facility and is integrated into the community as opposed to a stand alone facility behind a wall. ( literal and figuratively)

I have a few friends who work there and there are great programs for addiction and mental health.  Not enough for sure but

I think that anti-depressants are talked about more & more, though I meet people all the time who are so relieved to hear about others they know & like who are on them - as in a person dealing with a LOT of stress now who has tried to keep everything looking perfect.  She was amazed & relieved to hear about my  husband and other friends, and even my own use of St. John's Wort periodically.  It was as if she'd been given permission to accept it, and within a couple of days, she had started on them.

There is stigma, but more like the "You Go First..." thing - becoming much more accepted and seems to lead to some compassion between people.

It makes sense that he is mentally ill and has some sort of addiction, (underlieing which is often some sort of illness) based on reports of his life in the press. However it does not make sense that he did what he did because he likely had a mental illness.  Lots of people likely have the same or similar mental illness, and addictions that he didm, and the vast majority do not kill.  Like the Arizona shooter, there are other factors, including societal, and personal history that contributed to the killing.  This would include how much of societies stigmitization of mental illness, he had adopted, and how that affected his decisions to do what he did, and as well his lack of treatment, or the wrong treatment.

Stigma might be down around mental illness, but it is only relative. There is a huge amount of it around mental illness. When was the last time you saw in the obituaries a request to leave donations to the Canadian Mental Health Society, in lieu of flowers? You see such requests all the time for Cancer Societies, and Heart Associations. Yet People die from depression all the time. Suicide is one of the most common ways people under 60 die, and its is not uncommon among those over 60.

I see that quite a bit Alex, but then I am one of those peopole who read the obits.

i agree that what has been reported in the press leads one to assume he has some sort of mental illness, my point was simply that just because people say and think and print it doesn't mean that it is true.

He may well have some sort of illness and that may have been combined with some other issues to cause this tragdey.  I just worry when the press jumps to these obvious conclusions.

It always seems to me to cause an increase, not in help for the people who need it but fear of them

 Mental health care gets very low priority in Canada. Treatment is heavily drugs based even where counselling has been proven vastly more effective, and a good proportion of our mentally ill are simply banged up in prisons with a good chance of contracting HIV and hepatitis and acquiring a new addiction or two. They are also likely to experience assaults.

We desperately need prison and mental health reform in this country... not more prisons. If prisons "worked" and mentally ill people were treated more humanely we'd be needing fewer prisons.

It seems to me that both the way we look at illness in the individual and in society needs to be dealt with.

Drug therapy is very problematic, and we need ways that will look at other solutions that might or might not include drugs.

For one,  drug therapies (for both mental, and other illness) have different outcomes in different individuals. This is even more so when dealing with drugs taken by people for years and years. 

Having taken antivirals for over 15 years, and having friends that also have done so, I can attest to that.   Also studies have indicated that drugs for mental illness have increased disability over the long term. They seem to work for the short term, and for some conditions for some people in the short term, but over all since the wide spread introduction of drugs, those with mental illness are more likely not to be able to work.  

Counselling, behaviour changes, and real inclusion in society needs to be looked at.  However our system promotes drug therapy to the exclusions of other solutions.  This is because illness is seen as being confined to the individual, and that fact that the profit motive determines what happens in medicine.  There is a lot more money to be made from drugs, so they end up as the main form of treatment.

If mental illness is being spoken of in other places, kudos!

I can say that in this area it is like stepping back to the Ward and June years in both good ways and bad ways. We know our neighbours, do not need to lock doors... but "secrets" stay under the rug and in the closet.

The suicide rates are high, yet we do not speak of it. The alcoholism rates are high. So, too are domestice violence rates along with abuse of children.  Again, it is all unspoken.

The most we get about mental illness is in a prayers of the people and "those suffering mentally, physicaly or spiritually" or "those sick in mind, body or spirit". That is it.

I have yet to hear domestic violence, mental illness, child abuse, addiction.... spoken of in these churches and that is over 6 years of attendance. I do not think a line in the prayers of the people is "discussion".

Stigma is funny in ways.  Often mental illness is talked about, but in hush, hush tones.  It and other disease that carry stigma are seen as shameful, because somehow many still believe the person suffering is somehow to blame, thus it is a moral shortcoming. In a way it reflects old theologies, long rejected that illness is Gods punishment.. Stigma reveals the harm that has been done by these theologies.

Stigma behind mental illness also reinforces a false split between mind and body. The very idea that we have mental illness, and physical illness as classification prevents solutions from being found.  Many so called physical illness cause impairment in our brains, and many brain disorders, also affect us physically.

Church is the perfect place to discuss these issues, and help find solutions.  In particular, process theology is helpful in understanding the issues needed to overcome both stigma, and the impairments caused by illness.

gotta throw the bullshit flag here, alex...

it really pisses me off when people make statements like this... that the medical system in our country is driven by profits over the health of the individuals.  i hear this all the time, and it such a bogus bunch of nonsense.

i have never worked with a doctor or nurse or nurse practitioner that felt this way.  ever.

are drugs prescribed way too much in the treatment of the mentally ill in canada??  probably.  but where we differ is in the reason WHY.

we simply do not have the doctors needed to ensure that every patient gets the counselling and non-drug therapies that they need.  have you tried to get an appointment with a mental health professional lately??  you are waiting up to 6 months sometimes... 1 month if they feel that its an emergency.  and rather than let the patient languish with no treatment at all, i would suggest that its better to at least give them some kind of drug therapy in the meantime, until the system is able to work with them on counselling.

i know that i'm coming down hard on this one, but i have been hearing SO MUCH of this kind of crap within the MS community ever since the dawn of the 'liberation treatment'... you show me the data to support that most doctors in this country would rather just pump drugs into their patients than really help them.  cause i just don't see it.  what i see are doctors who are working hard to try and help people in a system that is woefully short staffed.

To which I shout AMEN! You speak absolute truth.

Amen here too sighs.

I would also like to add that many people who have mental illnesses will benfit from medication.  Some situations are a result of chemical imbalances which will be sorted out through medications.

saying no to meds for mental illness is like the  hysteria around vaccination to me.

Well. As somebody who has cyclothymia, which is a form of type 2 bi-polar disorder, I feel I should weigh in on this. Medication in my case was and is a more effective treatment than just counselling alone. I was on a few different medications, none of which worked well at all. I was then accepted into a study for a drug that is typically used for epileptics but was also found to have a positive effect in treating my type of bi-polar disorder. More than 10 years later and I am still on that medication and it still is doing what it supposed to do. Some days are better than others, but for the most part the medication does its job.

Counselling is great if you can get it. As sighs said, many people have to wait months before they can see a psychiatrist. I indeed had to wait more than 3 months as my condition was not considered urgent. It still affected my life in a profound way but I was grateful to eventually get the counselling I needed. I am also grateful for people who cared enough about me to help me get the right medication.

My doctor monitors my mood and I am honest enough to tell him if there are any concerns. He sometimes prescribes medication on top of what I am already on. Other times he lets try to deal with it on my own. While far from being a pill pusher, I believe my doctor has my best interests in mind and does not simply perscribe medication because of some monetary gain.

I was diagnosed with cyclothymia about 15 years ago which left a few years of trying different meds until the right one for me was found. Do I feel that medication was just fed to me without any regard for my well being? Nope. I believe that people did the best they could at the time with the resources that were available.

.

Until fairly recently, my city, Cambridge, was serviced by one psychiatrist for a city of 100,000.

I would estimate that well over 5000 of these people badly needed the services of  a good psychiatrist.  I have seen mothers have their children taken away by Child and Family Services based on a 15 minute interview.

Family Doctors were forced to prescribe psychiatric drugs - often with disastrous results.

My ex-girlfriend's GP changed her prescription because the drug companies sent out warnings about the side effects of Chlorpromazine (a very low cost generic drug). The expensive med she was put on also had side effects which the supplier downplayed.

Worse - it didn't work and within a month her child was taken away and she had to be committed to London Psych in 4 point restraints.. I went down there and convinced her shrink there to put her back on CPZ. She had a full recovery in 3 months - the staff was amazed. It was another year before she got her little boy back.

I agree that Homeopathic medicine is outright fraud and Naturopathic medicine is only slightly better (overhyped and poorly researched when they work at all).

MD's prescribe drugs without proper monitoring because the facilities just aren't available. Behaviorism (counselling) is really psychology, not psychiatry - it's helpful but not a blanket cure - especially in the more serious cases. Even then, the system is far better than Homeopathy's placebos and Naturopathy's snake oil remedies.

i agree totally.

whenever i have a depression, i KNOW that my thinking doesn't make any sense... i could talk to someone until i'm blue in the face and i still wouldn't be any better off.

the medications that i have been on for the past 5 years have changed my life completely... i went from a suicidal mess to a stable woman and great parent.  imho, my mental illness is MY RESPONSIBILITY to control.  my family should not have to suffer the consequences of my struggle. 

loving this conversation

Sigh - I agree with 'responsibitlity' but we also have to know that not all people are capable of seeing forest for trees, or even knowing when they are missing something.  I have family members who might have good intentions, but can't piece together what needs to be done.

Tangent continuation - As an 'alternative health service provider' - as in childbirth support, I am infuriated when rhetoric and shady anecdotal evidence is given against medical help or good treatment.  We, in this realm of alternatives, need to be standing on credibility & collaboration with health care professionals, and client/patients to provide an intact trustworthy net of care, or yes, we're in for  the wrong reasons.

One area in particular that is bothering me to no end is the direction taken by some so-called "Christian" Chiropractors.  They have a pryamid scheme set-up and seek to win stable clients with fear-mongering about health & heaven.  ICK - have seen it 3 times in 2 years now, and its atrocious behaviour within a group who are so very close to being mainstream. 

End of tangent..

We all have a responsibility to be strong in ourselves & wise, and able to support the people around us who can't be.  There are varying degrees and times when we're stronger than others.  So mental health care needs to be a group effort with compassion & trust.

What about CAMH Centre for Addiction and Mental Health in downtowon Toronto on College St. W. ...I know for a fact the great wrok they do!

 Judd, I had a friend who was knowing she was moving out of control..begged to be treated.  She camped out at K-W hospital (or Grand River, now i guess).  Finally, after many trips, she was in....and she had sunk way lower than she was when she was first aware.  It was a med thing...and she ended up in Homewood until she was stable again.  Cambridge has been underserviced for a long time....and..I am guessing that other cities are as well..and that lack of resources has a huge consequence on lives.

Birthstone,

I agree that those who are reputable in "alternative health services" need to speak up and out against those who are not reputable.

If someone tells my bipolar mom that they can pray it away or have some powder for under her tongue or could accupuncture it away, plain and simple- they are charlatans.

That said, alternative has a place. My mom benefits from relaxation techniques (hypnosis, meditation, Therapuetic Touch). No Dr. told her that her caffiene, sugar and salt consuption mattered, that was through "alternative" folks (but it is sound medically)  She benefits from exercise, but that too came from "alternative" folks. My neice benefits from a ketogenic diet (she is epileptic and thought to be bipolar) and that was from "traditional" medicine.

Holistic health care....psychological, physical, social and mental... whole people, matters.

Acording to the papers and tv news he wasn't in any of the states that was suggested. His own family said that in the last many years he totally changed about everything in life. If you had read all of the stories you would know that he had developed some kind of mental problem.

The Queen street hospital is great that they are adding on but the real problem is getting the people to go and see the proper doctors and not lie about their problems.

AND if they have been lucky enough to see a proper doctor and get the right meds. there is nothing to make them stay on the meds. As soon as some of these people are feeling good they go off their meds and the cycle just keeps on going.

We host a weekly afternoon yoga program run by our local outpatient mental health provider. I love being in the building when it's running because one of the group members plays the piano for about half and hour beforehand and she plays beautifully. And I tell her that.