Archive for the ‘Health Debates’ Category
PM’s priorities out of touch
Jan 19 2012
It’s time to take a scalpel to all those useless programs involving education, health care, government services, social programs and the environment. And while we’re at it, let’s get rid of that useless freedom of information nonsense. I sure by now we all know we can trust our government to put our taxes into the things that matter and serve those who matter. / Canadians named health care as their number one federal election issue, yet, the Conservatives have chosen to cut Health Care Transfers and abandon their health care responsibilities.
Tags: budget, Health, ideology, mental Health, standard of living
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Why medicare needs Ottawa
Jan. 16, 2012
Writing cheques and walking away from the duty to improve medicare is not only a retrograde step that endangers health care and the economy, it also reveals a vision of an increasingly shrivelled and parochial federation, where governments look inward and the whole becomes a pastiche of increasingly isolated parts. Here are seven reasons why a strong federal presence in health care is vital to Canada:
Tags: budget, featured, Health, ideology, mental Health, standard of living
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Poor mental health harming productivity, says OECD
Dec. 13, 2011
The OECD’s report, entitled Sick on the Job? Myths and Realities about Mental Health at Work found that most people with a mental disorder are in work, with employment rates of between 55 per cent and 70 per cent – about 10 to 15 per cen-tage points lower than for people without a disorder. But people with mental illness are two to three times as likely to be unemployed as people with no mental health problems. This gap represents an economic major loss… health systems in most countries were narrowly focused on treating people with severe disorders such as schizophrenia, who account for only a quarter of all sufferers.
Tags: disabilities, economy, mental Health, standard of living
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Canada’s prisons becoming warehouses for the mentally ill
Dec. 07, 2011
More than one in 10 men and nearly one in three women held in federal prisons have mental-health problems, according to 2009 figures from the Correctional Service of Canada. Those numbers represent a near-doubling in the total proportion of inmates with mental illnesses between 1997 and 2009… “Psychiatric institutions have been closing over the years, and the mentally ill … have now found that the correctional system has become the institution of last resort”… The problem could intensify once the omnibus crime bill becomes law…
Tags: corrections, crime prevention, mental Health, rights
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Health a growing area of concern for Eastern Ontario
Dec. 3, 2011
… in the words of Ontario chief medical officer of health, Dr. Arlene King… “All of (poor health factors) speak exactly to the social determinants of health”… King is asking the government of Premier Dalton McGuinty to view all provincial programs and policy through a “health lense,” setting goals and targets for improved health, measuring health indicators like infant mortality rates and focusing more health care system resources on prevention. This is necessary because 75% of what makes people healthy or ill is outside the jurisdiction of health and long-term care.
Tags: budget, Health, ideology, mental Health, standard of living
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Privatization threatens public health care, Romanow warns
Nov 30 2011
Romanow decried a “palpable momentum toward individualism, decentralization and privatization” in Canada. He gave the example of a “meanness of spirit . . . that somehow finds money to buy defibrillators for hockey arenas, but drags its feet about providing potable water to First Nations communities” — and said the government’s “so-called new thinking” misguidedly frames health care as a commodity rather than a right.
Tags: budget, Health, privatization
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CAMH gets $30-million donation for new research institute
Nov. 28, 2011
Cutting-edge work investigating new ways to treat mental illness and provide better care for patients will soon be one step closer to reality because of a massive $30-million donation to create a new research institute at Toronto’s Centre for Addiction and Mental Health. The donation, made by the daughters of the late Audrey Campbell and their families, is the largest private donation ever made to a mental health and addiction research hospital in Canada.
Tags: mental Health, philanthropy
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Days of blindly topping up medicare are over
Nov. 23, 2011
…the CHT gives Ottawa the moral authority (if not the legal right) to impose conditions on provincial health spending, and to create a semblance of a national system… hospitals, physicians, nurses, patients or others, have been saying for years that they want Ottawa to place strict conditions on the CHT as a way of ensuring specific programs are undertaken.
Tags: budget, Health, ideology, mental Health, standard of living
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Let Canadians die with dignity
Nov. 16, 2011
Ottawa should heed the advice of a high-profile panel on end-of-life issues and decriminalize voluntary euthanasia and assisted suicide, as several other jurisdictions have already done, including the Netherlands, Oregon, Switzerland and Belgium… some form of assisted suicide be permitted – even for those who have not been diagnosed with a terminal illness, because patients may be suffering terribly and permanently.
Tags: Health, mental Health, rights
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Jungle medicine for drug addiction
Nov 08 2011
Made from two plants mashed, cooked and juiced, ayahuasca looks deceptive, a watery spinach soup in a cup. But its effect is extraordinary, hyperactivating the parts of the brain where emotional memory is stored and processed. Rather than revisiting the same old neural connections, it forms new ones, letting people look at a painful event they could not normally contemplate without agony and altering the way they see it.
Tags: Health, mental Health
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