Vancouver Province
for December 6, 2001

There’s a curious political phenomenon abroad – Gordon Campbell can do no wrong not because he’s perfect, or anything close, but because voters still hate the NDP so much.

Between one in five and one in four British Columbians will, some day, suffer from clinical depression or one of its manifestations such as anxiety (often called panic attacks). We’re not talking here about the natural depression one feels at a great loss – though that can have a piling on effect for many. We’re talking about a seriously disabling disease that almost twice a day in B.C. results in suicide, far too often amongst teenagers.

I know something about this. About 15 years ago, after enduring "panic attacks" that became unendurable I sought help. I had to – I simply couldn’t cope except, oddly, when "on air" where I somehow felt safe from attack. I learned that while there are many causes of clinical depression, one of the most common is the inability of the brain to manufacture what is called seratonin. When, as happened in my case, an appropriate substitute is found, the results can be spectacular. It’s not too simplistic to say, as I often have, that medicines like Prozak and many others are to the depressed as insulin is to a diabetic (which I also am).

The problem is getting the mentally ill in for treatment. The stigma attached by society to mental illness is horrific. Society talks a good game but the reality is that in many ways it’s worse now than it ever has been.

Ask yourself – what do you think of when the word Prozak or Paxil is used? If you’re honest, you’ll say a medicine to calm down the crazies. Scarcely a day goes by that I don’t read or hear some prominent person "joking" about the need for someone who has just "lost it" to take his Prozak and calm down. Last summer one BC MP Chuck Strahl – and they should know better – said that about a political critic. Last week in a local paper there was a cartoon showing a man and woman at the altar with the man looking very uncomfortable saying "the prozak in me says ‘I do’". Ha, ha, ha.

Last week, Premier Campbell, whose father committed suicide, and who has promised to tackle mental health in this province, abolished the office of Mental Health Advocate. The advocate, Nancy Hall, had done a marvelous job of identifying where the mental health problem was and how the government could bring sufferers within the system. This was her trouble, you see. By discharging her mandate she embarrassed the hell out of the NDP and the Liberals. Of course when it was the NDP being embarrassed, it was great fun for the Liberals.

The Minister of State for Mental Health thinks that because mental health now has its own ministry, complete with a blue paneled committee looking into everything, all will be well. It won’t. Bureaucrats hate identifying problems. So do politicians. Problems cost money – and they bring unwanted political heat. The only way you can identify the mental health problems in this province, just as the only way you can identify government misspending or bureaucratic abuse, is with an independent servant of the Legislature such as an auditor-general, an ombudsman or a mental health advocate.

Premier Campbell knows this – that’s why Ms Hall is out of a job, and the job itself is gone.

It’s a disgrace, of course, but he’ll get away with it because we’re all too busy hating the departed NDP to notice or care.