Interesting Times

The Feds have just announced a $55 million per year (five-year) commission/centre into mental health and it’s to be based in Calgary. Excellent.

So far it looks like it’s going to end up as a building or group of offices.

Let’s get the links here: There’s http://secure.cihi.ca/cihiweb/dispPage.jsp?cw_page=PG_910_E&cw_topic=910&cw_rel=AR_1730_E which says homelessness is a huge contributing factor to mental illness.

Then there’s the Senate report which everyone is waving around, the link to which is on the side of this page. It’s been there for months.

I was walking by the river yesterday when I saw the headline announcing the commission jump out at me from the news stand. I had to buy it. It’s the first paper I’ve bought in years. I was talking about it with my son and he proposed the following scenario:

A: Hey, the press is really coming down on this mental illness thing.

S: Oh, hey, I guess we better do something. What have we got on it?

A: We got this Senate report from about a year ago. It looks pretty good.

S: A year ago eh? We better get onto that. What’s it say?

A: Says the same thing the press is saying.

S: Oh, ok, what’s it cost?

A: $85 million over five years.

S: Hmmm, right, give them $55 million. Where is the pressure from the press coming from?

A: Calgary.

S: CALGARY?!!! That’s my home constituency! Set up a centre and get some sort of press announcement fast. Send the minister!

And so it goes. It seems Steve has been moved by the travesty of mental illness and homelessness in his home town. Quoting the Herald, he says, “We see mental health disease everywhere.” Actually, kidding aside, I believe he is being sincere. I mean it.

It’s important to realize you are not going to solve this problem overnight. A building is good. A long-term commission is good. But please remember it’s been done before and we’re still hooped.

This is because of the fundamental problem with our society. We can find solutions to problems but we have great difficulty applying them. Building a centre as an answer to a social problem is a perfect case in point.

It’s like this … we see someone homeless and mentally ill. We say, ok, they’re homeless, I guess we had better give them a home. So we take them, and clean them up, give them a shave and descent clothes and maybe even a job. We set them up in a nice place, give them meds, check in on them once in a while and see how they do. I’ll tell you what happens. Five seconds after you leave, they take off and they’re back on the river bank. Calgary has done this before. It doesn’t work. It is not a sustainable solution to the problem. It helps the working poor, but the mentally ill -- a huge proportion of the homeless -- nada.

The drop-in centre is a fabulous facility with incredibly hard working people. It’s jammed packed and overflowing. It cannot solve the problem; it can only deal with the symptoms. It is not designed to solve the problem, only to try and cope with it.

The problem is not just a problem with the mentally ill; it is also a problem of our society. Re-read with Madeline says about this. We have become an extremely materialistic society and it’s killing us. The homeless mentally ill and how we deal with them underscores the illness of our society.

To explain: the Webster’s dictionary says materialism is a denial of any form of spirituality. Everything is material or physical. Spiritual things like value, honesty, truth, integrity, love, selflessness and so on, the things that are indicative of the human spirit, do not exist in a materialist dogma; they are the results of physical interactions like ingrained pathways of the mind trained by a lifetime of chemical reactions among neurotransmitters.

To put it in clear terms, we all have a choice: we are either very intelligent animals or we are spiritual beings having a physical experience. I really don’t care which decision you make on this. Just realize there are consequences to the decision you make.

So, if we follow this dichotomy, if there is a problem, a materialistic solution is to find something material or physical to solve it, like a building or drugs. It fails to recognize that it is not money per se that has the power to solve problems; it’s people. This is a very difficult point to get across. Our society has lost sight of competency and replaced it with levels of measurable qualifications which may not actually solve the problem.

It’s not that there’s anything wrong with capitalism; it’s what we do with it that counts.

The Senate report is very clear. We can solve the problem. It may take five to ten years, but we can solve it. To do so we need drugs and shrinks – competent shrinks. Yes, we need support of other people. We need to end prejudice. We probably need a building. But without shrinks and drugs, you’re not going anywhere. It’s people – competent people – who will solve the problem.

Let’s clarify this. The commission is spending $55 million over five years. That’s $11 million a year. Calgary spends about $55 million a year on the homeless. So $11 million is not that much money. I’m not saying we turn it down; it’s just we have to be careful with every penny. So how about we try a different tack. Let’s take five shrinks and 10 cops. Cops cost 100 grand per year, everything considered. For shrinks, budget 150 grand each. Drugs are cheap. That’s roughly $2 million a year. Get these guys on the street and start pushing anti-psychotics and mood stabilizers like street drugs. Follow up with support and lead the sick to long term treatment without locking them up. You want to deal with this problem, then get off your seat, away from your desk and your computer, and out onto the street with the people.

To cure mental illness, you have to hit it with meds to get the fire under control. You follow and support with therapy to finally douse it. In five years you won’t need a building – they’ll build one on their own by themselves and with no help from anyone.