Pubdate: Mon, 28 Aug 2006
Source: Vancouver Sun (CN BC)
Copyright: 2006 The Vancouver Sun
Contact:  http://www.canada.com/vancouver/vancouversun/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/477
Author: Paul Willcocks

HIGHLIGHTING THE FAILURE TO DEAL WITH AN ACUTE HEALTH CRISIS

VICTORIA - This city has suddenly decided that it has a problem with 
panhandlers, the homeless and drug addicts, mostly thanks to a U.S. 
group that decided to take its convention somewhere else.

Too many panhandlers and tacky T-shirt shops, the Americans 
complained. The decision cost the Empress Hotel $200,000. The Times 
Colonist revealed all this 10 days ago, prompting a flood of letters 
to the editor and brisk public debate.

And, most usefully, a damning review of the Vancouver Island Health 
Authority's failure in the areas of addiction and mental illness from 
its own clinical director of psychiatric services.

The authority has neither the resources nor the will to meet the 
medical needs of people with addictions or mental illness, Dr. 
Anthony Barale says. Its staff struggles to provide basic care with 
"little support and the pitiful resources provided by VIHA." The 
health authority's services would be inadequate "even by so-called 
Third World standards," Barale said in a letter to the Times Colonist.

Barale is quitting what should have been his dream job, giving in to 
"long-standing frustrations" with VIHA. He's based at the 
two-year-old Archie Courtnall Centre, which was to represent a new 
vision for dealing with mental illness. Instead of showing up in 
emergency rooms that were ill-equipped to help them, people suffering 
from a mental-health crisis were to go the centre. It was to provide 
a calm, specialized response to their problems, helping them avoid 
longer-term hospitalization.

The community backed the vision, which Barale helped developed. The 
prominent Courtnall brothers, including former NHL stars Russ and 
Geoff, led a $2.2-million fundraising campaign. The centre is named 
for their father, who committed suicide after struggling with mental illness.

But it's gone wrong. The centre was expected to deal with a mix of 
patients. Instead, Barale says, it's been swamped by people 
struggling with addictions. The centre and its medical staff aren't 
equipped to deal with the complicating issues of homelessness, hunger 
and disease. But there's nowhere else for the people to go.

The centre had reserved beds for people who just needed a day or two 
of care to stabilize their mental illness. Those beds have been given 
over to addicts needing a place to detox. It would be immoral to turn 
them away when there is no other help, Barale says. The region has 
seven detox beds, treatment is scarce and supported housing for 
people recovering pretty much non-existent.

None of this is a surprise. The difference is that the criticism is 
coming from inside.

And none of these problems is limited to the Island. Resources for 
both mental health and addictions are inadequate in every part of the 
province. When health authorities set their budgets, the mentally ill 
and the addicted can never compete for spending priority with the 
push for more knee operations or seniors' beds.

The result is more mentally ill and addicted people living on the 
streets, panhandling or just getting in the way.

The attention being paid to the issue here is welcome. Maybe it will 
even bring change. But there's something bizarre about the fact that 
it took the loss of $200,000 in convention revenue to get peoples' attention.

If we were the kind of society we profess to be, surely the presence 
on our streets of more and more sick, skinny people, with abscessed 
arms and empty eyes, would have suggested something needed to done.

Even if we didn't much care about the people, the $200,000 in lost 
convention revenue is nothing compared to the costs of untreated 
addiction and mental illness every week. Health care, policing, 
emergency social services, harm to communities and businesses -- the 
toll is enormous.

Those are the costs of the health authority's failure to deliver 
adequate mental health and addiction services, with the consent of 
municipal and provincial politicians.

Barale says the community better start fundraising and planning how 
to deliver the services on its own.

"VIHA," he says, "has no real will and no real resources to do so."

Footnote: In last week's column I said B.C. had a junior minister for 
mental health and addictions and challenged readers to name the 
minister and one initiative he or she had promoted. It was, 
inadvertently, a trick question. The job vanished after the 2005 
election. Addictions and mental health now have no champion, not even 
an ineffectual one.
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MAP posted-by: Beth Wehrman