Northern View – Long-Term Mental Health Facilities

The BC government started downsizing institutions like Riverview Hospital in the 1980s and it finally closed its doors for good in 2012.

This was done in an attempt to give people power over their lives and integrate them back into society, and at the same time realize significant financial savings.

Using short-term sick beds in regular hospitals for mental health is a lot cheaper than running permanent mental health hospitals. Yet clearly not enough of these savings were redirected towards community mental health support and care.

Because not all mental health patients can get better in a few days or weeks, and people often need months or even years of around-the-clock treatment and care.

But when facilities like Riverview began shutting down wings and eliminating beds, many people that still needed longer-term help simply had nowhere to go and ended up on our streets. This is one of the primary reasons why we see so many people out there in the cold, and the numbers keep growing every year.

It’s estimated by experts that a third of all street people suffer from chronic mental health issues and half of those people have addiction issues with drugs or alcohol.

So now, when we consider the costs of creating new long-term mental health facilities, we also need to consider the millions of dollars we spend every year on additional policing, repeated ambulance calls, emergency room costs, overdoses, suicides, increased crime and lost business in downtown cores, and the list goes on.

So it’s good news that Kevin Falcon is starting the conversation, but my hope is that both him and Premier Eby make this a central part of their election platforms, because people with chronic mental health issues should never be living on the streets, let alone in northern BC in the middle of winter.

Editors note: The views expressed in this column do not necessarily represent the views of Pattison Media.

by Chris Beach

Northern View – Long-Term Mental Health Facilities

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