“What happens is people suffering with mental illness often are homeless or drug taking, and if you are homeless and drug taking you generally come to the attention of police”
NANAIMO–Over a decade spent on the streets of Nanaimo, France Tellier saw how people with mental illness sometimes wound up behind bars rather than in treatment.
The strategy from the Mental Health Commission of Canada calls for spending on mental health to increase from 7% to 9% of total health spending over 10 years, an increase of as much as $4 billion.
Canada’s first mental-health strategy would fix a healthcare system its authors say is so fractured and under-funded it’s turning prisons and jails into the “asylums of the 21st century.”
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