WELLINGTON COUNTY – The Canadian Mental Health Association (CMHA) Ontario Division is calling on the province to increase mental health and addictions funding.
In February, CMHA Ontario sent its 2022 pre-budget submission to the province’s finance ministry, highlighting what it considers chronic underfunding and pandemic-related strain on the sector.
While CMHA Ontario developed a provincial platform addressing the sector’s general needs, the Canadian Mental Health Association of Waterloo Wellington (CMHA WW) has developed a proposal specific to local needs.
The proposal, CEO Helen Fishburn explained, includes a three-year plan focusing on prevention and promotion, as well as intensive supports in treatment, at a cost of $30 million in the first year.
It includes expanding the IMPACT program to run 24/7, increasing opportunity for supported mental health and addictions housing, and improving access to psychiatry and inpatient services for children and youth in crisis, including access to an early psychosis program and an eating disorders program.
Fishburn noted CMHA WW hasn’t had a base budget increase since 2017, which is why CMHA branches across Ontario are asking for an immediate base budget increase of eight per cent.
Prior to the pandemic, Fishburn said, CHMA WW was already experiencing significant wait times for services. Those have increased significantly over the last two years, thanks to higher volume and the requirement for more complex care.
“Our situation’s even more dire now, in terms of trying to respond to the need, and the pressures in our community,” Fishburn explained.
“So without that big funding increase we can’t address the pressures, we can’t provide additional staffing, we can’t increase our wages to our current staff.”
Mental health and addictions have been historically underfunded, Fishburn said.
“We have to increase that level of funding, to better address the needs that are there in our community,” she added.
“Increasing that base funding gets us to the level of proportion in terms of what we’re seeing across healthcare systems.”
Fishburn added mental health doesn’t just show up in formal mental health and addiction services offered by groups like CMHA – it shows up “in absolutely every corner of our community.”
HELEN FISHBURN
“We have to address the root cause, which is people’s wellness. That has to get addressed to be able to respond to the incredible domino effect of the mental health and addiction needs,” she stressed.
The symptoms of the people who accessed CMHA services prior to the pandemic have become even more intense and more acute through the pandemic, Fishburn noted.
“People who struggled before are struggling even deeper now,” she said. “There is a lot of stress and worry and hopelessness that is part of our fabric in our community right now.”
An important piece to combat that, she added, is providing a better level of prevention and promotion to address people’s needs before they become at risk.
“So to build that awareness education and support right at the beginning, so that upstream work, if you will, before people need that intensive work downstream,” she explained.
Fishburn noted the funding at CMHA is all reactive funding, meaning it comes after people become quite impacted by mental health and addictions and are at high risk.
“At the same time as we’re responding to people reactively, we also want to try and do our best to prevent people from experiencing a crisis and from deteriorating in their ability to function and cope in life,” she explained.
Fishburn also noted there remains a lack of understanding surrounding mental health and addictions.
“We continue to be impacted by stigma, even within the formal health care system, where again, because it’s not well understood, and it isn’t often visible, it is easy to be overlooked,” Fishburn explained.
She added that although there are best practices that can be used to support people suffering from mental health and addictions, people don’t come forward as easily with those challenges.
“Sometimes people fear that it’s their fault that they have it, versus it being recognized as a physical health condition,” Fishburn said.
She added CMHA is continuing to fight to remove the stigma around mental health and advocating to make sure everyone is aware that “mental health is health.”
