To the editor:
Re: “New beds, more workers promised for mental health ‘crisis,’” Nov. 22.
I was most interested in and also somewhat surprised and puzzled by this article.
Earlier that week I had been part of a Health Fair at Langara College, at which many of the other presenters represented organizations supporting people with mental health issues. Every one of them spoke to me of government cutbacks to their societies or cessation of government contracts since the last B.C. election earlier this year.
And then I read in your paper that the provincial government, along with the City of Vancouver, will be funding new beds for psychiatric patients, additional teams of social workers and improved information sharing between police and health agencies in an effort to combat the city’s mental health “crisis.”
Is there not a discrepancy here? Is there not maybe a “crisis” in the area of mental health precisely because of cutbacks to programs offered to mental health consumers and their families (along with funding cutbacks to many other vulnerable people throughout our province) ever since the Liberals returned to power in 2001?
It would seem to me to be fiscally wiser in the long run to keep funding important services and support programs to people living with mental health challenges and their families in order not to get to a situation of “crisis” proportions.
Carolyn Main,
Vancouver
