Investing in mental health is a sound strategy

With a federal election well underway, there’s lots of talk about hot-button issues. People will be voting for the middle class, for action on climate change, for improved childcare, for better infrastructure, for jobs, jobs, jobs. In truth, a hidden thread runs through all these priorities. It’s a topic at the top of the agenda at the Canadian Mental Health Association’s Mental Health for All Conference in Toronto last week, where more than 700 experts, service providers and international leaders gathered to share hard-won wisdom and puzzle out solutions to a lack of access to services, long wait times and years and years of chronic underfunding. Half of us will experience a mental health problem or illness before we reach the age of 40. Those of us with less stable employment, higher debt loads, lower household income, histories of trauma or experiences of racism or discrimination will be more likely to fall into this group. An estimated 1.6 million Canadians have an unmet need for mental health care. And, in 2019, 7.5 million of us will experience a mental health problem. Depression is the leader in disability costs yet garners a scant third of cancer’s funding. Suicide takes the lives of 4,000 Canadians a year, with another 100,000 left reeling from the devastation. We’ve seen over 10,000 deaths from opioid-related overdose since 2016. Each of these statistics is underwritten by a human experience. Those, in turn, are coloured by the stigma that still clings to mental illness, by the shame of being unable to afford proper care, by the frustration of being incapable of changing a loved one’s trajectory. The economic costs of mental illness are equally astronomical. But for every dollar in lost productivity, for every dime allocated to disability costs, for every penny pinched to pay for psychotherapy, there is a correlating story of lack. Lack of access to services, lack of funding, lack of compassion and understanding of mental illness as both a legitimate and treatable disease. What could explain our refusal to allocate resources equal to the challenge? If not for the ugliness of stigma, we believe mental illness would be understood as the pressing social policy issue of the day. We aren’t alone in that view. In soon to be released polling conducted by Nanos Research for the Mental Health Commission of Canada (MHCC), a full 85 per cent of Canadians agree that mental health is equally important to physical health. Yet funding for mental illness hovers around seven per cent of total health spending. The recent dedicated mental health funding transferred to the provinces and territories in the Health Accords was an important step in the right direction. But the fact is, to properly knit together our patchwork of lack we’re going to need to amp up innovation and do things differently. Evidence tells us that every dollar spent to treat mental illness, and every cent invested in mental health promotion, yields a guaranteed return. In short, mental health spending provides any political party with a sure-fire way to reap dividends on social spending. Every dollar spent on publicly funded psychotherapy delivers two back into to the public coffers. Investments in collaborative care can return an employee off work due to mental illness a full 16 days earlier. And Stepped Care 2.0, a pilot project in Newfoundland and Labrador spearheaded by the MHCC, which integrates e-mental health technology with traditional models of care, is reducing wait times by as much as 68 per cent. Costs that would normally be incurred by hospitals when treating young people with suicidal ideation can be cut in half, simply by deploying community-based rapid response teams. It’s a long road until we reach parity between physical and mental health care. But we can’t let that discourage us. Canada could become the leader in mental health spending among the G-7 countries, simply by doubling our meagre seven per cent. Investing in mental health is a sound strategy, not a drain on the public purse. It translates to spending on innovation and jobs. It correlates to giving people a greater shot at reaching their full potential, avoiding social welfare and performing well at work. If a government invests in the mental wellness of its people, it will be well on its way to addressing Canadians’ top priorities. Louise Bradley, O.C., is president and CEO of the Mental Health Commission of Canada. Fardous Hosseiny is the interim chief executive officer of the Canadian Mental Health Association, national. The Hill Times

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Investing in mental health is a sound strategy

If a government invests in the mental wellness of its people, it will be well on its way to addressing Canadians’ top priorities.

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