FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE November 18, 2002

Safety net for people with mental illness is gone: OPSEU

TORONTO – The Ontario government has shredded the safety net that used to protect people with mental illness, said OPSEU First Vice-President/Treasurer Warren (Smokey) Thomas.

“Our psychiatric hospitals were the safety net for the mentally ill. The government in the last four years has removed this safety net,” he said. “What this means is that, for many people desperate for help, there is no facility that HAS to take them.”

Before being elected to the full-time union office, Thomas was, for more than 25 years, a registered practical nurse at Kingston Psychiatric Hospital.

This latest crisis stems from the government’s so-called reform of mental health, he said. Since 1998, the Ontario government has:

· Handed over six of 10 provincial psychiatric hospitals to the control of public hospitals that don’t have the expertise or interest in caring for the mentally ill;
· Through downsizing and divestment forced out hundreds of people who used to work with the mentally ill.
· Reduced beds in the current and former psychiatric hospitals;
· Privatized support services and clinical programs in our hospitals, such as psychiatric care for seniors.

Thomas unveiled a union report – Reality, Ontario’s Mental Health Care System isn’t working. The 100-page report documents serious and fatal shortcomings in a system that should protect the most vulnerable citizens in the province. Please click here to download the report (.pdf).

“Our report refers to coroner's inquests and newspaper reports from across the province that tell the sad and horrific stories of the mentally ill who have been turned away from the emergency rooms of public hospitals. As one Hospital CEO quoted in our report says: the demand for psychiatric services far outstrips the supply,” Thomas said.

“And if the mentally ill person is lucky enough to actually get admitted into the public hospital, they’ll be discharged after only a two or three day stay. The hospital will stabilize them and then release them, whether the patient is well or not. This can lead to disastrous consequences.

“Our report talks about a case in Hamilton earlier this year when a schizophrenic was released against his mother's wishes after a week-long stay in hospital. He returned home and stabbed his father with a screwdriver. The father later died from the assault.”

Thomas said that people with money and connections can always find the treatment they need. People who have the double misfortunes of mental illness and poverty are at the mercy of the system we create.

In the area of mental illness, the people with the greatest needs and the most complex diagnoses are the hardest and most expensive to serve. These are the ones who get turned away from other treatments. These are the people who the provincial psychiatric hospitals always took in.

“The government needs to learn the lessons from its dangerous dismantling of mental health services,” Thomas said.

“For a start, it should implement the recommendations from our report.

“Its first recommendation is essential.

1. The province must stop closing beds in the current and former Provincial Psychiatric Hospitals as there is an urgent and demonstrable need for those beds.”

“We need time to get the promised care in the community before we close any more beds for psychiatric patients. There have been too many suicides and too many other tragedies because people who desperately need help have been turned away,” he said.

“There has to be a place for patients whose mental state makes them disruptive, even dangerous, to themselves and to others. That place is NOT the streets, NOT the jails, and NOT wards in general hospitals.”

Sadly, information reaching the union indicates that a series of nine regional task forces set up by the government will recommend more bed closures and more dismantling of the psychiatric programs for in-patients and outpatients provided by our hospitals.

“If this happens, the crisis we are outlining today will get much worse,” he said.

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For further information:

Click here to view the speaking notes from the November 18 Press Conference
Katie FitzRandolph: 416-448-7440 or cell 416-788-9057 or kfitzrandolph@opseu.org