By Kathleen Mochnacki On April 9th, I watched on CBC’s Power and Politics the Minister of Mental Health and Addictions, Ya’ara Saks announce a 2024 Budget proposal of $500 million dollars for a Youth Mental Health Fund to help younger Canadians. Here is the Press Release:   Does this mental health fund include funding for “younger Canadians” who are experiencing their first psychotic break?  Will it ensure access to a psychiatrist, and an adequate hospital stay and supportive housing upon discharge? The Press Release reads “And, because many of them are still in school or just starti ..read more

By Dr David Laing Dawson Recently the NIMH announced that in the U.S. the prevalence of schizophrenia and related psychotic disorders is between 0.25% and 0.64%. This implies that our assumption of a 1% and higher risk (and prevalence) has been wrong, or that, miraculously, progress has been made in the USA in the prevention of schizophrenia. Unfortunately, this also implies that we need not spend as much money or attention on this serious illness. But, of course, it turns out those figures arose from something called household surveys: phone calls to a representative sample of American Househ ..read more

By Dr. David Laing Dawson This clever little book was published in 1989 and is still going strong. And I was reminded of it last night while watching commentary on the Israel Hamas Gaza war, and the overnight missile and drone attacks by Iran, as I listened to pundits, commentators, military historians, retired generals, and politicians weigh in. All men of course. And what struck me from their interpretations, conclusions, advice and prognostications, was that they too learned all they need to know in kindergarten, or perhaps between JK and grade 4. But unlike the author of the original book ..read more

By Marvin Ross Over the past few months, we’ve done a number of blogs on the problems of supportive housing using a Christian charity (Indwell) as the example and published some research on how it operates by Karen Allin in Mississauga. Karen has no personal involvement with serious mental illness but she was concerned when Indwell wanted to build near her. She found my blogs and that concerned her about their competence. At the public meeting she attended, some of Indwell’s own residents came and complained about the failures of that organization. And then I heard from another resident at Ind ..read more

Karen Allin The Housing First model is based on the theory that if homelessness is caused by a lack of housing, then provide people with immediate access to affordable, supportive housing. Supports need to address: mental and physical health, substance abuse, education, employment and general life skills. Critical Characteristics of Supported Housing and Seeking Supportive Housing are two Canadian reports that provide more detail about the range of supports that residents are looking for. Some of the many supports mentioned in the reports include: 1) Support with independent living, such as co ..read more

By Douglas James Brown with an introduction by Marvin Ross Early on in my advocacy, I read the following op ed by Mr Brown that appeared in the Hamilton spectator. That was about 2005 and I was so taken with it that I got permission to have it reprinted in the website schizophrenia. Mr. Brown is a survivor of our failed system for dealing with those with an illness of the brain. He ran into a problem with a callous hospital and an inept police department that almost derailed his life even further. Fortunately, both the Hamilton Spectator and I writing in the Huffington Post, helped with public ..read more

I’m trying something new this week. Instead of a written blog, this is a video of a presentation given in March 2020 to Home on the Hill in Richmond Hill, Ontario by Dr Nick Kates. At the time, Kates was chair of the McMaster University Psychiatry and Behavioural Neurosciences Program (now retired) and a strong proponent of collaborative care. Within this video is a brief presentation by Dr. Don Berwick on quality and safety in health care which Dr Kates has been influenced by for his own work. Berwick is terrified of the indignity and loss of influence that one often gets in health care. One ..read more

By Kathleen Mochnacki Surveys to obtain information from family caregivers of those with severe mental illnesses can provide an opportunity to get genuinely useful information about significant problems that family caregivers encounter in trying to get appropriate help for their family members or themselves Such surveys need to recognize how the lack of appropriate mental health services affects our loved ones, how unrealistic mental health legislation affects whether our family members gets treatment or not and the attitudinal barriers that can prevent needed communication between mental heal ..read more

By Marvin Ross The Playhouse Cinema in Hamilton Ontario is the latest organization to punish Jews because of Pro-Hamas demonstrations against the war in the Middle East and it is discriminatory and despicable. The Hamilton Jewish Federation had arranged to hold its Jewish Film Festival in April at the Playhouse back in December according to the cinema. On March 19, the cinema cancelled the event via e-mail to its subscribers. Their reason: “After receiving numerous security and safety related emails, phone calls, and social media messages, the Playhouse Cinema reached a difficult decision to p ..read more

By Dr David Laing Dawson I think we have always expected our politicians to lie, but usually through exaggeration, omission, avoidance, associations that suggest causation, and feigned emotion. And that’s what Katie Britt did in her rebuttal to Joe Biden’s State of the Union address. She feigned outrage and fear and sorrow in a rather burlesque fashion. She omitted dates and times and geography in her stories, and managed, in the sequence of her telling, to create false associations. But she didn’t fully confabulate, invent and deceive. Which is where I’m going with this thought. I don’t remem ..read more