UBC psychiatry professor and city councillor Kerry Jang has passed a motion that will lead to Vancouver dealing more effectively with issues of mental illness.

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NEWS: Vancouver to enact plan for dealing with mental health

One in five Canadians is likely to experience a diagnosable mental illness, and by 2020 it is estimated that depressive illness will become the number-two cause of disease burden worldwide — and the leading cause in developed countries like Canada — according to Coast Mental Health. Even so, less than four per cent of medical research funding goes to mental illness research.

Given these statistics, and the fact that members of Vancouver’s large homeless population are often afflicted with concurrent addictions and mental-health problems, councillor Kerry Jang passed a motion in council last week to establish a mental-health plan for the City of Vancouver.

Jang, a UBC psychiatry professor who works with the recently established Mental Health Commission of Canada, moved the motion following a Vision Vancouver campaign promise to establish a mental-health advocate for the city. As it stands, the plan, for which City staff will produce a report by the end of February, will include recommendations for a mental-health planner or advocate who will work in tandem with the already established drug policy director.

“We wanted to take a far more comprehensive approach,” says Jang. “We’re reacting to the uniqueness of Vancouver, because if you go anywhere else, there’s no such thing as the Downtown Eastside in any other major city.”

Jang noted in his motion to council that one-third of all calls to which the Vancouver Police Department responds involve at least one mentally ill person, and an estimated 60 to 70 per cent of people with mental illnesses treated at St. Paul’s Hospital have multiple addictions. “Mental health and addictions have to work hand in hand,” he says. As for arguments that mental health is a provincial jurisdiction rather than a municipal responsibility, Jang says the city’s mental-health problems have been exacerbated by attitudes of “negligence.”

“That type of attitude, that type of ‘let someone else do it’ is what’s gotten us into this problem and why it’s gotten worse,” Jang says. “Somebody who’s mentally ill doesn’t give a damn if it’s a provincial, federal, whatever responsibility. They need services now. And let’s face it: they’re on the street, they’re here, they’re ours. We’ve got to take responsibility.”

Darrell Burnham, executive director of Coast Mental Health, says a municipal mental-health plan will be an important step for the City in raising awareness of, and giving support for, individuals with mental illness. “Part of it is a leadership of thought,” he says. “It’s easy to blame the victim in mental illness. With many other health issues, you never do that. If someone comes down with cancer, you never, never say it’s their fault.”

Burnham says the city councils he has dealt with over the years have been “very progressive,” particularly with regard to obtaining rezoning and development permits for social housing. He hopes the prospective mental-health plan can provide leadership to the province and across Canada.

If all goes as planned, Vancouver city council will start the recruitment process for a new mental-health advocate by the end of February, with the successful candidate starting work as early as March.