Community support needed for mentally ill

Kim Clark used to live around the corner from me. We had kids at the same schools and I knew she was an interpreter for hearing impaired students. As a neighbour, I hadn’t the slightest notion she was dealing with teenage daughter who was developing schizophrenia.

Today a resident of Metro Halifax, Clark suspects Koral lives on the street or in people’s backyards. She has seen her 25-year-old daughter twice in the past six months.

If she breaks the law, only then can Clark hope to get Koral back on her medication for paranoid schizophrenia.

But that is not easy. As an adult in her mid-20s, Koral is recognized as independent. Yet, Clark is well aware that off her meds, Koral, who also has hearing problems, is not cognitively capable of making decisions.

Clark is hopeful that Koral might someday live at the mental health transition centre under construction in Dartmouth. The four 10-bedroom bungalows at the site of the Nova Scotia Hospital promise transitional housing for those who have been hospitalized. Residents will get care while practicing the life skills they will need to live in the community.

Clark hopes the project can fill a large gap in the mental health system. All too often, the current system leaves people utterly on their own after hospital treatment. Then, they flounder “and the cycle repeats itself,” she adds.

Transition space needed here

The Kings County Mental Health Association would dearly love to see transitional housing come to this area. There are a number of mental health consumers (the current societal label) living in the Kentville area due to the proximity of the Valley Regional Hospital’s psych unit.

Individuals suffering from mental illnesses often stop taking their medications. They start to feel better and discontinue the pills or they can't bear the horrible side effects, like total exhaustion. There’s a sad Catch-22 quality to this oft-repeated scenario. In our crime report, there are usually five to 10 mental health calls every week.

Local police forces have acknowledged they have to cope with more and more mental health issues. When law enforcement officers become involved, patients may end up becoming criminalized during a crisis.

Community based treatment, not prisons needed

Several years ago now, Michael Kirby, of the newly formed Mental Health Commission of Canada, said Canada’s prisons and homeless shelters have become the “asylums” of the 21st century. "This is intolerable in a country as rich as Canada," he said. "Over the years, governments have rightly shut down the old psychiatric institutions, but they never fully put in place the necessary community-based services to replace the institutional hospital beds that had been eliminated."

It is estimated today one in five Canadians will experience a significant episode of mental illness over the course of their lifetime. As a parent and advocate, Clark wants to see more community support behind young adults like her daughter. Moving the Beacon unit to hospital grounds in Kentville was one positive step locally.

More community-based treatment for mental health is to be celebrated, but it needs to happen outside Metro, too.

So Walk the World with Clark and members of other families in support of those battling schizophrenia on Sunday, Oct. 4. The local walk starts at 1 p.m. from Robie Tufts Park on Front St. in Wolfville.

http://www.nsnet.org/kcss/