One of my pet peeves on government waste, both federal and provincial, has to do with mental health. This is an area of expenditure that, to my mind, has a very poor scrutiny of its spending. The media and other groups have been for a long time promoting that not enough is being spent in this area because not everyone who needs mental health service can avail themselves of it.

Well, from my research, the reason that our mental health dollar doesn’t go so far is because it is ridiculously expensive per person for care. Just like the recent Epi-pen controversy in the United States, in which the drug company Mylan has raised the cost of that drug from $100 to over $650 in just the last few years, so too in Canada is mental health given Cadillac-type spending for a Chevette-type of result.

Did you know that when a person is institutionalized in a psychiatric facility in Ontario such as Centre for Addiction and Mental Health or any psychiatric hospital bed, that it would be less expensive to get them a room at a major Toronto hotel with full-time nursing support? I did the calculations.

Couple this immense cost with the lack of results produced by the system and you just have one big boondoggle.

People once they are ensconced within the system, even if they leave an institution, are generally placed on community treatment orders which force them to take medications that cause them to be debilitated in life. It should be mentioned that the majority of those who are forced to take such medication feel terrible when they take them and can’t function properly. They are debilitated over time as they experience chronic brain impairment which makes recovery and a normal life impossible. This is the major reason why such people stop taking them.

There is little information provided to patients or their families about the effects of such medications as laws which provide for informed consent are largely ignored by mental health providers.

The bottom line is that taxpayers are on the hook for this inefficient and costly system which really doesn’t cure but only warehouses, either physically or pharmaceutically, those in it.

It is a discussion worth having.

Bob D. Smith is the publisher of the Monitor Telegram

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