159 search results for
Experiences of mental health challenges
Recommendation 56:
Eliminate the use of Emergency Response Teams in regional treatment centres and on mental health units. Ensure decisions to deploy the ERT consider the potential traumatic impact of the team on the prisoner and weigh the potential for psychological harm against the potential benefit of using this high level of force. Amend policy to reflect this.
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Recommendation 1:
Effective children’s mental health services — including both prevention and treatment — must be provided for all those in need. As well, pre-existing service shortfalls must be addressed. Given predictions of as much as tenfold increases in the needs for the most affected children, in the short-term this will require ensuring comprehensive plans, substantially increasing budgets for children’s mental health, protecting these budgets, and ensuring efficient whole-of-government service coordination. While the front-end costs of such investments will be high, the long-term benefits will be high as well — including reducing costs associated with avoidable long-term mental health problems. For children with mild or transient symptoms, effective prevention programs can stop the progression to mental disorders, which often become entrenched and persist into adulthood with ensuing distress and disability; meanwhile, for those with disorders, effective treatments can reduce distress and speed the return to healthy development and functioning.
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Recommendation 1:
Divest from policing and invest in community-based services, specifically non-police interventions that support people who are impacted by homelessness, toxic drug supply, mental health distress, and those working in informal/grey economies, such as sex work.
Joint Open Letter on Decriminalizing Poverty
Group/author:
Battered Women’s Support Services, BC Association of People on Methadone, BC Civil Liberties Association, Black Lives Matter – Vancouver, Centre for Gender & Sexual Health Equity, Coalition of Peers Dismantling the Drug War, Defund 604 Network, Downtown Eastside Women’s Centre, Hogan’s Alley Society, Metro Vancouver Consortium, Overdose Prevention Society, PACE Society, Pivot Legal Society, Restoring Collective, Sanctuary Health, SWAN Vancouver, Tenant Overdose Response Organizers, Vancouver Area Network of Drug Users, WePress, WISH Drop-In Centre Society
Battered Women’s Support Services, BC Association of People on Methadone, BC Civil Liberties Association, Black Lives Matter – Vancouver, Centre for Gender & Sexual Health Equity, Coalition of Peers Dismantling the Drug War, Defund 604 Network, Downtown Eastside Women’s Centre, Hogan’s Alley Society, Metro Vancouver Consortium, Overdose Prevention Society, PACE Society, Pivot Legal Society, Restoring Collective, Sanctuary Health, SWAN Vancouver, Tenant Overdose Response Organizers, Vancouver Area Network of Drug Users, WePress, WISH Drop-In Centre Society
Year:
2021
2021
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Recommendation 2:
Develop and build youth-specific housing that includes a variety of accommodations including communal, transitional, supportive, scattered site, and affordable market units. There should be designated low-barrier housing for youth with mental health and substance use concerns, as well as housing for youth who do not use substances. Youth recommend having teachers, nurses, and life-skills workers onsite.
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Recommendation 11:
Develop an alternative model for recognizing and responding to prisoners with mental health disabilities in crisis, in partnership with the Provincial Health Services Authority (including the Forensic Psychiatric Hospital) and people with lived experience. This includes prisoners in emotional distress (such as prisoners who are self-harming) as well as prisoners who are experiencing behavioural emergencies connected with their disabilities. These responses should be supportive and trauma-informed rather than punitive.
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Recommendation 55:
Develop an alternative model for identifying and responding to prisoners with mental health disabilities in crisis in partnership with mental health experts (including experts in forensic psychiatry) and people with lived experience. This includes prisoners in emotional distress (such as prisoners who are self-harming) as well as prisoners who are experiencing behavioural emergencies connected with their disabilities. These responses should be supportive and traumainformed rather than punitive.
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Recommendation 2:
Develop a Métis Mental Health and Wellness Action Plan to improve mental wellness, reduce problematic substance use, and address the harmful effects of colonialism, assimilation attempts, and the residential school system.
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Recommendation 33:
Develop a “no wrong door” policy by ensuring all organizations know what resources are available and what youth need supports to ensure no youth falls through the cracks. Mental health organizations should partner with non-profits to provide youth with clinical supports and workshops. There should be one referral document for all services such as the Wrapforce program in Kamloops and the One Door initiative in Kelowna.
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Recommendation 204:
Declare the opioid crisis a national public health emergency that disproportionately impacts Indigenous women, and expand funding for immediate health-based solutions for the opioid crisis that focus on the specific needs of Indigenous women. This includes:
- Full spectrum of recovery supports including immediate access to Indigenous women’s detox-on-demand and treatment centres.
- Indigenous-run treatment centres that use culture as treatment with Indigenous healing methods and land-based practices.
- More indoor overdose prevention sites and consumption sites, including culturally safe sites for Indigenous women only.
- Decriminalization and access to safer drug supply.
- Opioid-assisted therapy programs and full spectrum of substitution treatment options.
- Longer-term funding for range of culturally safe treatment programs.
- Provincial regulation and oversight over all recovery programs and facilities.
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Recommendation 3:
Currently “Specialized Service Agreements” under Part 2, Section 4(3) are focused on criminal investigation services, traffic enforcement services, police communication services, and forensic services. If the Ministry wished to ensure behavioral health and crisis response supports were coordinated with policing within designated service areas, this section could be amended to include such supports, with regulations in place to limit the role of police officers in mental health response while providing access to alternative service agreements to support coordinated, community-based crisis response.
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