Susan Inman BC’s NDP government has recently appointed Dr. Daniel Vigo to be B.C.’s chief scientific advisor for psychiatry, toxic drugs and concurrent disorders. Selecting Vigo, a widely experienced and well-respected researcher, is a wise choice in the midst of the current drug related crisis in mental health. It’s also a good moment, with a provincial election looming, for this government to begin to track its record in relation to actions and inactions related to severe mental illnesses. Positive Steps The NDP government does have significant accomplishments that are important for the well ..read more

By Dr. David Laing Dawson Of course appropriate institutions and authorities must investigate Thomas Matthew Crooks, and the apparent security lapse that occurred at Donald J. Trump’s rally. But Thomas Matthew Crooks was 20 years old, and his action, his behaviour, by and of itself indicates delusional thinking. His text on a website that this would be his “premiere” indicates that he expected to survive, to witness the response to his actions. The act of texting this on a gaming website points to his need for an audience, a following. A following of his fellow gamers. The incidence of psychos ..read more

By Marvin Ross I recently finished this 6 part docudrama based largely on the reporting of William L Shirer’s dispatches form Berlin and elsewhere. Shirer’s book, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, should be a must read. What most struck me was this statement at the end: “The world seems to have forgotten many of the lessons of what happened in Nazi Germany. What happened in Nazi Germany could happen here and you have to be vigilant and fight against it.” It is starting here and we must be aware of it but we aren’t. Robert Lantos, the Canadian film producer wrote to Avi Benlolo when he hear ..read more

By Dr. David Laing Dawson We all misspeak at times, saying the wrong name, the wrong time frame, naming the wrong geography or circumstance. We each of us lose our “train of thought” at times, leaving our sentences to drift into cliches or detours, or odd associations, or phrases like “You know what I mean”. But the fully functioning healthy brain usually catches this, notices this, and corrects then, at the time, or thirty seconds later. “Did I say Mitterand? I meant Macron, of course.” It is the absence of self-correction that is, could be, an early symptom of cognitive decline, a sign of lo ..read more

For mental health week, I reproduced the obituary that had appeared in the Hamilton Spectator for the death of John Capelli who died at the age of 76 after a life time of schizophrenia. It was a tear jerker that elicited many letters of sympathy to the editor. Then, the Spectator wrote a feature on the life of this family with the headline of “Our tears are not for your death, dear brother, but for your life:’ A story of schizophrenia, a family’s love and a man who suffered ‘every minute of every day’” I suspected that my friend, Steve Liddycoat, knew the family as Steve was one of the founder ..read more

By Marvin Ross There are two distinct groups in Canada who require help with housing – the poor for whom adequate places to live are too costly (affordable housing) and the disabled who not only need decent affordable places to live but who also need supports to help them (supportive housing). We tend to mix the two up but I want to focus on supportive housing in this blog. Supportive housing is needed for those with both physical and mental disabilities . For those with mental illness, the 2016 Ontario Auditor General’s report states that providing supportive housing for people with mental he ..read more

By Marvin Ross For over 20 years, Lembi Buchanan has been fighting to ensure that those with mental illness and their families get proper tax credit from the Canadian government on par with those who suffer from physical disabilities. It was a long and difficult fight resulting in numerous court challenges but she did make progress. Lembi’s efforts are Chronicled in her book The Accidental Advocate that was reviewed here. Dr David Goldbloom, professor of psychiatry at the University of Toronto described her fight as “an Erin Brokovitch style memoir”. In his Foreword, Murray Rankin who got to ..read more

By a member of  Mothers for Mental Health Care Reform I am keeping my identity and the identity of my family member (FM) secret to protect my family member’s privacy. My FM has schizophrenia but was doing quite well on a Community Treatment Order (CTO), although they had no insight into the illness. This lack of insight or anosognosia is a symptom present in 50% to 80% of all persons with schizophrenia. It is also common in dementia, structural brain damage and stroke. According to McNally K, it may be one of the most important symptoms. He said “When Eugen Bleuler categorized the core sy ..read more

By Marvin Ross I first wrote about this problem in the article below in 2015 in Huffington Post and health privacy is still a problem that has never been addressed by most jurisdictions. At the moment, Manitoba is making changes in a new law just introduced that would  allow medical professionals to contact a patient’s support network in situations where serious harm is likely to result. It sounds quite logical and based on common sense but it is controversial and resisted in many jurisdictions.. Manitoba’s law arose, in part, from the case of Reid Bricker who took his life after being di ..read more

By Dr. David Laing Dawson Shortly after Clozapine was introduced in Ontario, a teenage girl was admitted to Hamilton Psychiatric Hospital. She had developed early onset schizophrenia two years before and was still psychotic. Her parents were Italian and spoke only a little English. An Italian speaking psychiatrist had been treating her in the community, the family resisting hospitalization until now. The other medications had failed to make much difference and the ward psychiatrist wanted to try a course of Clozapine. The child and her parents were informed of the protocols and risks that came ..read more