David Gratzer is a psychiatrist at CAMH. David Goldbloom is a psychiatrist, senior medical adviser at CAMH, and past chair of the Mental Health Commission of Canada.
It may be the biggest change to mental-health-care services in five decades. Earlier this month, Quebec Minister of Health Gaétan Barrette announced that his province would publicly fund psychotherapy for people with depression and anxiety provided by psychologists, nurses and social workers. Ontario made a similar, if smaller, promise earlier this year and other provinces are considering similar initiatives. But how can we turn these big promises into big help for the hundreds of thousands of Canadians who could benefit? Two words of advice: go British.
VIMHS acting executive director Taryn O’Flanagan presents a talk titled The Mental Health Continuum, Depression and Anxiety: Effective ways of coping and supporting one another
“Would we not avoid self medicating and future issues of homelessness and joblessness, plus families being broken and children thrown into foster care, if we took child and teen mental illness more seriously?”