New facility to fill treatment gap for mentally ill: Abbott
Frances Bula, Vancouver SunPublished: Sunday, February 03, 2008
BRITISH COLUMBIA - The province will create a new type of facility by summer for its most difficult and violent mentally ill people, Health Minister George Abbott said today.
Abbott said such a facility would fill the existing gap for the mentally ill, many of whom are also drug-addicted, and help reduce the load on police.
Vancouver police have produced a startling report, to be officially released Monday, that says officers spend a third to half of their time dealing with the mentally ill.
Abbott said that can be reduced by creating a new kind of secure treatment facility, which might be a permanent home for some, and may be located at Riverview hospital in Port Coquitlam.
Abbott said he'll be officially announcing the facility in two weeks, and would not release any more details until then.
"We need a unit that can provide a period of stabilization, which can run from days to weeks, where the clients can be assessed and stabilized and observed," Abbott said. "For some, it may be a permanent thing."
He said there are about 100 to 150 people in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside who are chronic challenges, "who offend regularly, who are in and out of jail, who are in and out of hospital and are on an hourly or daily basis getting into trouble."
Abbott said the new unit, which will operate in conjunction with the new community court that is to open this summer as well, will provide a service that doesn't exist now in the spectrum of mental-health services. It will be different from Riverview, in that the aim will be to get people stabilized and back out into non-institutional housing.
At the moment, the province has supportive housing, where people with mental illnesses can function with the help of drop-in or in-site health and support workers, or it has the Forensic Psychiatric Hospital in Port Coquitlam, which is for people with very serious conditions who are constantly in conflict with the law, but nothing in between.
He confirmed that Riverview, B.C.'s former major institution for the mentally ill, is still one of the sites being considered for the new facility.
Abbott was adamant that dealing with the 150 or so chronic offenders would make a dramatic difference. He did not have information on what kind of support staff will be offered for the many residential hotels the province is taking over in the Downtown Eastside or the social housing it has committed to building in Vancouver for people with mental illness, drug addiction or both.
That "both" group is large and growing. About 40 to 60 per cent of mentally ill people are also drug-addicted, a phenomenon that has been hard for the separate health and addictions systems to cope with. Many of those people are living in social housing run by non-profits who get only enough money to have one staff person in the building at any given time.
Abbott also said that, while his ministry is always looking at whether there should be changes to the Mental Health Act, he's not prepared to make any immediate or unilateral changes.
"This is a remarkably difficult area," he said.
B.C. families that have struggled with a mentally ill relative have often demanded they be given more legal power to put their sick family members into institutions or treatment.
"But the mentally ill have rights as well," said Abbott.
Abbott's comments were part of a flurry of responses from politicians over the weekend to the Vancouver police report, the findings of which were published in The Sun Saturday.
Abbott and the city's majority Non-Partisan Association council members focused on what is being done to improve the system, while the NDP and opposition city councillors blamed the provincial government and Mayor Sam Sullivan for having done so little.
NDP health critic Adrian Dix said the police were put into the position of having to become advocates for the mentally ill because the province has systematically gotten rid of advocates, from the NDP-appointed provincial mental-health advocate to people in small non-profits.
Vision Vancouver Coun. Tim Stevenson said the police report, which he called "more than a wake-up call," was something police were pushed into because the mayor has refused to acknowledge the kind of workload they're dealing with and to provide more officers.
And, he said, Sullivan has also failed to be a champion for change. "These are Vancouver citizens. I would expect emergency meetings by the mayor. He should be trying to get on top of this situation."
But Sullivan said his council has done a lot already, together with the provincial government. He admits the report's numbers came as a surprise. "I was shocked by how large the numbers were, up to 50 per cent."
And he praised police for doing the report. "By shining the light on weaknesses in the system, it focuses on the investments we need."
But he said the provincial government is already moving on that, by planning for the new facility Abbott talked about and by investing in social housing.
NPA Coun. Kim Capri was more critical of the provincial and federal governments, saying city police are bearing the brunt of their decreased funding for health care over the years.
"Our police are now becoming your street-level mental-health workers and advocates," said Capri. "This raises the issue of downloading to local government."
She acknowledged it's a problem many people have been familiar with for years. Capri said that when she worked with the John Howard Society, a group that helps former prisoners adapt to life outside jail, it talked about the fact that the jail system was really turning into housing for the mentally ill.
