CKNW Editorial
for November 27, 2001

Big Valleys Ann’s Chauncey of Deveron. If you wish to register your dog, can’t just be Fido. Big Valley is the breeder, Ann is our dear friend Ann Jackson, dog trainer extraordinaire who is a regular on this program and had everything to do with getting is to the right breeder and Deveron honours both our late Clancy and the River near to which the Mair family springs.

The decision to end the position of Mental Health Advocate is, put plainly, wrong as hell and I’m surprised and disappointed at the decision.

First off, let me say that Nancy Hall did a terrific job. She is not political and certainly could not have been made redundant for party political reasons. I think the only conclusion one can come to is that she did too good a job for the comfort of the government and the new minister.

Why do I say that?

Because it was Ms Hall’s job to ferret out and report on areas where the mental health system was not working. Since it always was clear that the system was working very badly, if at all, she was bound to be a thorn in the side of any government. She was a thorn in the side of the NDP – she was a thorn in the side of the Liberals.

Let’s examine what the mental health problem is all about. If people develop cancer … some disease … break a limb … or whatever, there is no problem identifying the problem and no problem, in theory at least, in making treatment available. People who have physical illnesses freely identify themselves to the system and the system responds.

I’ve said this before but I think it bears repeating – if people with physical health problems had the same difficulties getting into the system and receiving treatment as mental health victims do, there would be demonstrations at the Legislature if not blood in the streets.

One of the major problems with mental health is that patients are reluctant to admit, even to those who love them, that they have a problem,. There is a very real stigma and while society has made strides towards understanding mental illness there is a very long way to go. Just yesterday one of the comics in one of our local papers showed a man with his bride before the altar, looking very dejected, saying the prozak in me says I do. Funny? Not very if you are depressed and afraid of being mocked the moment that becomes known. Just before I went on vacation I took a very well known national columnist to task for almost the same remark. She too thought she was being hilarious.

This attitude is a betrayal of fear – fear, in ignorance, of what mentally ill people are like and fear that it might happen to you. It is almost a gallows type humour. It’s not political correctness – suppose you saw a cartoon of someone saying to a woman, since you lost your breasts you look so nice and thin. Some things just aren’t funny. But take it a step further … suppose society made fun of women who needed mastectomies … such that women, facing a devastating decision, postponed seeing a doctor for fear of ridicule.

I draw no equations here – I simply point out that society in the 21^st century is still mocking people with mental health problems and mentally ill people, as you might expect, resist diagnosis for fear the treatment itself will be the object of public ridicule.

What this has meant is that tens of thousands of British Columbians, far too many of them young people, are sick and uncared for by the health care system.

It’s much more than that, of course. As Ms Hall pointed out here yesterday, many people with a mental health problem and a substance dependency problem both, wind up without help for either problem.

It was the job of the Mental Health Advocate to identify sick British Columbians who were not being treated.

The problem is a political one. Politicians, especially premiers and ministers, don’t like bad news. Neither do bureaucrats. They take it personally. Better that things not come to light than prove a political embarrassment. It takes a strong minister and a strong government to tackle social issues properly, because to do so means a lot of very unpleasant facts come to light. It’s tough … very tough politics.

Before he made his decision not to renew Nancy Hall’s contract, the minister phoned me and said that this was because with his new ministry and the restructuring that involved, her job was no longer needed. He was wrong – very wrong. The fact that there is a Ministry of Mental Health makes it all the more obligatory that the problems it must deal with are properly identified … and the bare truth of the matter is that this cannot be done internally.

I mean nothing personally in this. I believe the minister, Dr Cheema, to be a very sensitive, well motivated man who sincerely wants to make things better for the mentally ill. I believe the premier shares that feeling. But they are not going to identify the problem, nor be able to bring solutions to bear, without help from those whose jobs don’t depend upon results.

All ministries in all governments all over the world operate on a system of what I might call CYA – cover your ass. The political – and indeed the bureaucratic – profit comes not in identifying and finding solutions but in showing a good balance sheet. The fewer problems, the better.

Mental health problems do not decrease with indifference – the very opposite happens. The fewer counselors to kids, the more problems, the more childhood suicides. The less attention paid, the less encouragement given to mental health patients, the more the social problems individuals, families and communities face. In a sense, the mental health problem mirrors the criminal law problem. We ignore the causes of crime, refrain from common sense preventive measures then pay a huge price in dealing with the work of criminals.

Dr Cheema places great store in the special committee he has struck to examine and make recommendations to the government and I applaud this move. It’s long overdue. But it simply cannot effectively quantify the problem. It takes a full time function to do that and it takes a person whose job it is to present to the ministry the problems it must, from day to day, deal with.

The money is peanuts – about $300,000 a year – so that can’t be the reason.

The true reason is that people like Ombudsmen, Auditors-General, Child Advocates and Mental Health Advocates come a cropper with governments because they cheaply and very effectively bring before the politicians the difficulties they’re having governing properly.

Life for Dr Cheema and the Liberal government will be much easier after Ms Hall leaves this Friday. The community – not just the mental health community – the community at large will not only lose a first class public servant but their health and well being will be ill served for no reason better than that those who govern us, elected and otherwise, will have fewer embarrassing problems to deal with.