“None of them chose to be addicted or mentally ill, any more than someone chooses to develop cancer or rheumatoid arthritis”

A recent Simon Fraser University study showed that expensive services in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside do not result in improvements in mental health or legal problems for residents of this notorious neighbourhood, often called Canada’s poorest postal code.

To ask, however, why many in the DTES do not get “better” is like wondering why patients keep dying or being sick in our hospitals, despite all the health-care dollars expended on treatment, or why, despite repeated treatment, mentally ill people keep getting readmitted to psychiatric wards.  Read the rest of this article at the Vancouver Sun…