Glad To Be Alive To See: The Canadian Penny

On February 4, 2013 the Canadian Mint stopped manufacturing pennies. As much as I hated pennies (I always seemed to have a million of them in my wallet) I am very sad to see them go and miss seeing their copper colour in my wallet.

Discontinuing the Canadian penny is purely economic. The Canadian Mint says, “The estimated savings for taxpayers from phasing out the penny is $11 million a year.” I guess I’m ok with that. I can let it go if we’re saving millions!

While pennies have not been distributed for a few months now it only hit me yesterday that my future children will never know the penny in the same way I have. This would be similar to Canada phasing out the $1 and $2 bills and replacing them with coins (the loonie and the toonie, I know many of you laugh at that!!!).

Not having the penny does not mean we no longer have it’s nominal value in our currency. It is only when paying is cash will the price be grounded up or down. So if the total price is $5. 33 then you would $5.30.  For all other transactions, debit, credit and cheque you would still pay the 33 cents. We can also still use pennies in cash exchanges, stores just won’t be handing them out.

So, farewell penny (although I still have many of you sitting in a jar)! I am glad to have been alive to know the Canadian penny!

Mad Matters Book Review

Mad Matters:  A Critical Reader in Canadian Mad Studies

Edited by: Brenda A. LeFrançois, Robert Menzies, and Geoffrey Reaume

Canadian Scholars’ Press Inc.

Toronto

2013

 

Review by: Kristen, Pride in a Madness

 

Mad Matters sits on my shelf alongside Anatomy of an Epidemic (Robert Whitaker, 2010), Talking Back to Psychiatry (Linda J. Morrison, 2009), Psychiatric Power and History of Madness (Foucault, 2008 and 2009) and Behind the Rhetoric (Jennifer Poole, 2011); books that have influenced my life as a Mad person and professional. This reader is now an important part of my activism. As psychiatry has its “bible”, the DSM, I would say that I now have mine. Mad Matters is beginning to fill a gap within education (in and outside of institutions) and mainstream discourse, showing the complexity of identities, exposing a side of psychiatry and society many prefer to ignore and by providing language to describe the experience: sanism. My only hope is that it has opened the doors for more to come and for Mad studies, scholars and people to be taken seriously.

Mad Matters is filled with diverse and key topics such as housing, media, mental health literacy, law, Indigenous ways of knowing and the oppressions of psychiatry (just to name a few). Names of contributors jump out at me like Irit Shimrat, David Reville, Don Weitz, Bonnie Burstow and Lanny Beckman, long time activists within the psychiatric survivor, antipsychiatry, ex-patient/inmate and Mad movements. Good people who eat, sleep and breathe the cause are inside these pages. The amount of lived experience in Mad Matters is nothing short of beautiful.

On a personal note, I have often said to friends, family and colleagues that I find it unacceptable and ridiculous that the western world has made great strides in bring critical of racism, sexism, classism, heterosexism etc. but sanism is still alive and well and at times outright denied to exist. I would like our system and our society to get to the point where, for example, my decision to not take psychiatric drugs is seen as a valid choice and not as wrong, a sign that I am not “truly in pain”, or as non-compliance and a symptom of “disorder”. I have received criticism for my Mad and antipsychiatry stance. They are identities I am still developing in a society that prefers I just think of myself as “sick”. I have engaged in a lot of self reflection while reading Mad Matters and this reader was a reminder that I am, as the ever famous anti-stigma campaign slogan states, “not alone”.

Mad Matters is a critical piece that I feel has been missing from the mental health dialogue and Mad studies is part of solution to changing these sanist perspectives, practices and values.

 

Purchase Mad Matters

Canadian Scholars’ Press Inc.

Amazon.ca

“Mental illness is an illness like any other”… it’s not true and everybody knows it

“‘Mental illness is an illness like any other.’ This brave little slogan has been fighting the stigma of mental illness for eons. Sadly, it hasn’t worked and is unlikely ever to because it’s not true and everybody knows it. Aside from the fact that mental illness is the only illness for which you can be involuntarily incarcerated, it is obvious to all that something goes very wrong when your mind falls into a naturally different category from something that goes very wrong with your pancreas. No one would say that pancreatic cancer is an excuse for bad behaviour, though 40% of respondents in a recent poll said mental illness often is (Canadian Medical Association, 2008, p. 4). And the synonym “sick”, when spoken in anger (You’re sick!- never used to refer to physical illness), is one of the strongest epithets of hate in the language. Also, unlike almost all of illnesses, there is not a single physical test for any psychiatric disorder.”

- Lanny Beckman, founding member of Vancouver’s Mental Patients Association, Mad Matters, pg. 54

Think about this: what if treating mental illness like any other illness is actually what is making the stigma and discrimination worse because we are trying to make it something it is not. Maybe making mental illness it’s own thing is what actually helps promote understanding and well being?

Open your mind and think about it for a minute.

MPA website

 

Video: Lanny & the MPA 

http://www.mpa-society.org/

Luka Magnotta and Paranoid Scizophrenia

Luka Magnotta diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia, according to psychiatrist’s letter

Luka Magnotta, accused of killing Jun Lin, was treated for paranoid schizophrenia, according to a psychiatrist’s letter attached to a court file for his Toronto fraud conviction in 2005.

The part that’s missing is when the author says that not everyone experiencing paranoid schizophrenia end up killing someone, regardless of the medication status. Media fails again.

Justice & Ideology: The Not Criminally Responsible Reform Act (CBC Radio)

Thanks to C for bringing this to my attention. Brett Batten, you’ll be interested.

“Today we look at a bill working its way through Canadian parliament that would change how our criminal justice system deals with those who commit serious crimes but are determined to be Not Criminally Responsible.”

 

Good Mental Illness Policy Includes the Violence Taboo

Brett Batten, thought of you!

Posted: 03/04/2013 12:17 pm

Marvin Ross

Prime Minister Harper wants to enhance the safety of victims harmed by the violence of the untreated mentally ill with proposed changes to the Criminal Code in his Not Criminally Responsible Reform (NCR) Act (Bill C-54). Debates on the changes have just begun but his proposed changes ignored a significant group. The families of those declared NCR are at potential risk and they would still like to see better safeguards.

This group, called Advocates for Not Criminally Responsible Schizophrenia Sufferers (ANCRSS), is comprised of relatives, mostly parents or siblings, of people who have been declared NCR and who will be released from forensic units in the near future.

It is families who bear the brunt of care for those with serious mental illnesses. Many find themselves in the very difficult position of either trying to care for them or abandoning them to the streets, jail or even leaving them to die. Banishing them does not always work as they may return home periodically while in extreme psychosis.

In trying to care for their ill relatives, they leave themselves open to potential violence from those loved ones they are trying to help. After all, there are few hospital beds and few resources to treat them particularly if they deny they are ill and refuse treatment. As one of the mothers I spoke to said in an e-mail, “We slept with our bedroom door locked for many years, and hid the kitchen knives. I still remember when, at 4 AM, X was pounding on our door shouting ‘I know that you are humanoids in there’.”

Her experiences are borne out by research. A study conducted at the University of Pennsylvania in 2005 found that families of people with untreated psychotic illnesses “experience violence at a rate estimated to be between 10% and 40%, which is considerably higher than the general population.”

A 2012 study found that, “There is substantial evidence that individuals with schizophrenia are at increased risk for violent criminal behavior and an even higher risk for committing murder, relative to the general population.” That study compared a group that murdered with a group that did not and concluded, “The schizophrenic murderers demonstrated significantly worse neuropsychological impairment, involving executive dysfunction and memory dysfunction, relative to nonviolent schizophrenic men.”

As I pointed out in my previous blog post, one of many problems with this proposed new legislation is that it still retains absolute discharge once the individual demonstrates that he/she is well and is taking medications.

Once discharged, there are no restrictions and no provision for ongoing monitoring to ensure that treatment is adhered to so that the individual will not regress and become a danger again. As another relative awaiting the absolute discharge of her loved one said, these proposed changes are an illusion to make victims feel safer.

She went on to say that the only way this can be achieved is to make it a provision of an absolute discharge “that the person is seen by a team or managed by a case manager.” If the person stops seeing their psychiatrist and stops taking their medications then they should be returned to secure care. Also, blood testing should be carried out to ensure medication adherence and that the individual is not abusing alcohol or street drugs. Untreated psychosis coupled with drug and/or substance abuse is a prescription for violence.

As an aside, I wrote about this family in my book. They desperately tried to get help for the ill person and could not. As a result, the young man murdered both his parents. Had resources been available, this likely would never have occurred.

I will undoubtedly be lambasted for fostering increased stigma towards those with mental illness by talking about the existence of real and potential violence. Those who are politically correct contend that the mentally ill are less violent than other groups in society and they are right to a point.

The problem is, however, that those who are untreated are often violent and nothing is to be gained by ignoring reality. As DJ Jaffe of Mental Illness Policy Organization pointed out, most studies that show persons with mental illness are not more violent include a large percentage of those who are treated. He explains that this shows that treatment works and not that they aren’t more violent.

The mother who lived behind a locked bedroom door observed that, “Stigma was the result of living with an ill person who was not being helped.” And her other son who does not have schizophrenia said, “The reason that there is stigma is that some people with schizophrenia do these things!”

As many have said, including MP Irwin Cotler, the best solution is treatment and sufficient resources to provide that treatment to prevent these problems in the first place. Despite all the lip service from all the politicians, no one is doing this and the burden falls on the families to contend the best they can.

A Canadian Psychiatric Association Position Paper released in 2011 states that access to hospital care should be in place for all who need it and for as long as they need it but then points out that bed pressures and costs prevent this from happening. They recommend that, “Resources and services are put in place to provide appropriate and sufficient nonforensic, noncorrectional mental health treatment to prevent the criminalization of people with serious mental illness.”

We all know that this has not happened. Until it does, we are not dealing with these matters appropriately. We would not ignore the elderly with dementia or to those with cancer, so why do we persist in not providing treatment to those with a brain disorder.

As the Canadian Psychiatric Association said in the above paper:

“Societies are often judged by how their disadvantaged members are treated. People with serious mental illness within the criminal justice system clearly fall within the disadvantaged group, with the double stigma of their mental illness and a criminal justice label. Stigmatized and discriminated against, this is a population that begs for social justice and our urgent attention.”

 

Bell Let’s Talk 2013: Update

Still waiting for the final number (if they ever do….)

As of 14 hours ago this is where we were at:

That’s $4,272,808.35 raised for mental health initiatives across Canada!

The changing cost of mental health care in Canada

The most valuable currency in mental health care has shifted to something less tangible than money.

Sarah Robinson, February 12, 2013 9:29:10 AM

Mental health care is as much as money battle today as it ever was.

Canada spends more than $50 billion in health care costs and lost productivity each year as a result of mental illness. And if the Mental Health Commission of Canada’s most recent report is right, the cost of care will rise to more than $2 trillion over the next 30 years.

With so much money – and attention – being directed toward an umbrella disease affecting an epidemic number of Canadians, it seems impossible that the need for mental health care could be growing.

But the most valuable currency in mental health care has shifted to something less tangible. What is most desperately needed in mental health care is now availability, in the broadest sense of the term.

“There has been such a push for making mental health more talked-about,” Kristen Bellows, [Peer Support Facilitator and educator at] Young Ones Breaking Barriers, a non-profit that helps youth suffering from mental illness. “I know that’s the whole reason why Bell started Let’s Talk, because it was based off the idea that if we could talk about it, then people would seek treatment, which is of course what we want.”

Getting in the door

“My treatment has always been in the public sector. I have never had to pay for [treatment], either because I couldn’t afford it or insurance wouldn’t cover it,” said Bellows, who has dealt with borderline personality disorder for most of her life. “On average, you’re probably waiting about six months to get in.

“A friend of mine whose parents do have the finances to pay for her therapy, even she has to wait quite a lot of time to see her therapist, because so many people want to see a therapist. The private sector is getting its own waitlists going.”

Many of those waitlists operate on a priority basis. Basically, “the worse you are, the faster you get in to see someone,” explained Bellows. It’s the most logical way to handle the exponential rise in new patients that Canada is seeing. But all-consuming waitlists create another vulnerability in the system: people that worsen while they wait.

“My suicide attempt was while I was on a waitlist,” said Bellows, who began self-harming at 13. “After that attempt, I got in to see someone right away.”

Square peg, round hole

But the lack of availability isn’t limited to quantity. It’s also a question of quality for many patients that aren’t able to access a type of treatment best suited to their condition once they’re finally in the system.

For Bellows, that treatment was dialectical behavioural therapy (DBT).

“It was created specifically for people with borderline personality disorder, and until very recently, there hasn’t been a public program for that,” said the 23 year old. “CAMH [the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health] now has one, and Ontario Shores in Whitby has one, but the waitlist, I’m told, is about two years. It’s pretty brutal. You can go find therapists that practice DBT, but you usually have to pay for them. So I went and found a workbook and it’s really good.

“I didn’t just want to sit and do nothing. I want to try to do something.”

Worth every penny

For Kevin McGrath, the right treatment was more complicated than a workbook. It was also more expensive, and much further away.

“When I [sought] treatment through my workplace benefits, I was a bit disappointed, as they had a set of ‘listed’ people I could see,” McGrath wrote in an e-mail. “None of which specialized in OCD or anything of that nature.”

After seeing an episode of Obsessed about a woman that suffered from the same type of obsessive compulsive disorder as McGrath, he flew to Chicago to meet with the doctor from the show.

“The treatment was awesome and it actually changed my life,” said McGrath, who directed a documentary called Great White Life that touched on his mental illness. “That was the only time I spent out of pocket for treatment, and after airfare, hotels and treatment, it was worth every penny. I never could have gotten that level of treatment in New Brunswick.”

Winning at what cost?

Turning to treatment south of the border is nothing new for those in desperate need, particularly youth. If you can’t find a suitable treatment option, the government will pay to send you to a centre out of the country (usually the United States), for up to $80,000.

“What we’re doing right now here in Ontario is we’re spending millions and millions of dollars sending children and youth out of country – primarily [to] the United States – for treatment,” deputy Conservative leader Christine Elliott said just last week. “We believe that we could provide those services at home, and at a far lesser cost.”

According to Health Minister Deb Matthews, the number of patients sent to the US was 78 in 2011/2012, compared to 100 in 2007/2008, primarily due to the number of residential treatment options now available.

But those home-soil options aren’t cheap either. Pine River Institute, a residential treatment centre in Ontario that specializes in both mental illness and substance abuse – a rare undertaking for one place – starts at $448 a day for out-of-province students. The province will cover “basic” costs of the program for Ontario students admitted, but families must pay a monthly fee of $625 for parent retreats, transportation and activity fees.

“While there are a lot of flaws in the US system, it is a business and it’s a bottom line; they’re all about shopping for prospective patients.” said Dr. Susan Raphael, who runs a pay-what-you-can private counselling practice in Toronto. “Whereas in Ontario, it’s almost like they’re keeping people out with the demand and waitlists. There’s a lot of bureaucracy and scrutinizing candidates for treatment because the beds are so valuable.”

The federal government allotted $5.2 million in its 2012 budget for depression research and anti-stigma initiatives – a tangible commitment. But the murkier waters of availability require a more complex solution.

Gaining on the gap

If you ask Bellows, the crux of the current gap is “a combination of both not enough treatment and not enough variety of treatments.” McGrath trumpets more “specialized” care.

Raphael will tell you that though there are more services than ever before, the system is near-impossible to navigate for many, and without enough intermediary services for people stuck on waitlists.

But all of them see the surge in demand, the long waitlists and inundated centres as a triumph. To them, it isn’t a problem, but potential.

“I think that the real surge in people seeking mental health care – which is a good thing by the way – is because there’s less of a stigma attached to it now,” said McGrath.

Raphael is more cautious in her celebration. For her, the demand is a good sign, “but now we need to learn to meet that demand.”

She’ll tell you one thing, though, without hesitation:

“If I win the lottery, I’m gonna open something up for sure.”

Daily Prompt: Right To Health

Is access to medical care something that governments should provide, or is it better left to the private sector? Are there drawbacks to your choice?

I am Canadian so I am the beneficiary of government run healthcare. Living in Ontario means that I am covered under Ontario Health Insurance Plan (OHIP) and each province and territory has their own government run healthcare plan. OHIP is funded by resident and business taxes as well as money given to the province by the federal government. Each province/territory decides for itself how this money is distributed in their healthcare system. What is cover in Ontario may not be covered in, say, Alberta (and vice versa).

Under OHIP Canadian citizens, permanent residents, those with worker permits who make Ontario their permanent or principal home (must be physically present in Ontario 153 days in any 12-month period. Canadian citizens or permanent residents returning to Canada from another country are not normally covered by OHIP until they have been resident in Ontario for three months) are eligible for OHIP coverage.

OHIP covers emergency and preventative care. Essentially EVERY primary care doctor can provide care under OHIP which means the patient is never billed for their visit, the Ontario government is. OHIP does not cover dental, eye exams and prescription costs but those with certain diseases (ie: diabetes) will be allowed to access these some of these services free of charge or there is “last resort” funding available (Trillium Drug Program).

OHIP is occasionally adding, taking away or changing what is covered. For example: due to new medical evidence OHIP is making vitamin D testing covered for Ontario residents who have Osteoporosis and Osteopenia, Rickets, Malabsorption Syndromes, Renal Disease, Patients on medications that affect vitamin D metabolism. OHIP is ever changing depending on what is most needed, what science tells us and what the people demand.

Where OHIP lacks Ontario also has private insurance which can either be accessed through employment or by an individual/family. I am also covered under my partner’s private insurance. The most I use it for is dental which covers 80% for routine visits and 60% for major procedures and what not. This means that when I went to the dentist a few weeks ago for two fillings and paid $400 I got $300 back and I pay the rest to my Visa when I can.

So, YES!!! I do think that government should play a roll in it’s country’s healthcare! Canadians who do not have access to private insurance still have access to basic healthcare that can greatly improve their lives! I know the USA is constantly worrying about wait lists and reduced care but if it is an emergency THEN THE PATIENT GETS IT!!! Canada is healthier than the USA. Countries with government run healthcare are healthier then those who rely on the private sector.

Please, if you haven’t, watch Sicko by Michael Moore!

At least just try it!!! It will take a bit to work out the kinks but that doesn’t mean it won’t work.

 

Cracked: The Verdict So Far

Back in early January I posted an article about the new Canadian crime show, Cracked, which looks at crimes that involve people with mental health issues.

I have watched two episodes and about to watch a third and I wanted to share my thoughts on the show.

Cracked is fine. It has it’s flaws but it has some things I like in it also.

The main male character, Aidan, has unspecified mental health issues and he’s teamed up with Daniella who is a forensic psychiatrist. How I watch this show is by seeing how they are showing discrimination as being embedded in every day life.

Using Aidan as an example, he is constantly checked on and watched while working and people can watch this show and take it two ways.  One way people can take this is that Aidan NEEDS to be watched, that his boss is totally right to be suspicious. Or two, the constant need to know what he’s doing and how he’s doing is showing that the boss doesn’t trust Aidan because of his mental health issues.

Other examples include the constant need to pathologize behaviour, assuming everything “strange” is mentally ill, thinking we can see mental illness, and believing mental illness means that a person is incapable.

I do like that Aidan has issues but continues to work and do what everyone else does (because that’s generally how we live), Daniella is compassionate and wants to make sure that people with mental health issues are treated properly by the police, and so far it is showing that if a mental health issue is a factor in a violent crime that it does not mean the person is evil.

There are three incidents that come to mind when I think about why I’ll keep watching this show.

The first one is from the first episode when Aidan and Daniella are trying to figure out how who stab a teen boy in the chest and the insert a light bulb into his chest. Daniella is pathologizing like there’s no tomorrow and Aidan is trying to tell her it could easily just be a robbery and this exchange happens: 

Daniella: You think the killer was using logic when he put the light bulb in a boys chest?

Aidan: Probably not but I’ll start with logic and you can start with evil unicorns and we’ll see who solves it first.”

(Here’s link that includes a clip of that scene)

I laughed out loud!

The second was at the end of the first episode when they are going to catch the murderer who is a young man with schizophrenia who is using the light bulbs to bring people’s power back to his Mother to cure her stage 4 lung cancer. The young man (who’s name I forget) is holding a knife to his chest, hoping that he has enough power to save his Mother, and Aidan put his gun to his own head, hoping to stop the young man from stabbing himself. Aidan begins to say to the young man that he knows what it’s like to have something inside of him that just won’t shut up, that sometimes that voice tells the truth but sometimes it lies. 

I was left feeling a little emotional because I knew what Aidan was talking about and I’m sure many of you will too.

The final incident was a man experience apocalypse hallucinations while in severe mania. Aiden and Daniella at first thought he was the killer of a young woman (he was covered in blood that wasn’t his or his son’s) but in the end, by sharing his experiences of that night through his hallucinations, he allowed them to solve the murder!

Happy ending!

It’s also a bonus that the show takes place in Toronto so I’m familiar with the scenery and the names of places!

If you get a chance to watch the show I would like to hear what you think!