Social Policy in Ontario

Stop criminalizing mental illness

Posted on August 18, 2015 in Inclusion Debates

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TheStar.com – Opinion/Editorials – Ontario’s justice system is increasingly the first point of access for mental health treatment. That’s wrong.
Aug 17 2015.   Editorial

When Josh Priess had suicidal thoughts and his mother called 911 for help, the most compassionate response Ontario could muster was to have police toss him in jail on what his family calls bogus charges of uttering a threat and assaulting a cop. He had already been through the revolving doors of two hospital emergency units.

“They put me in the worst place for a person with mental illness,” Priess told the Star’s Amy Dempsey in an exclusive report in the Sunday Star about his nightmare in solitary confinement at Maplehurst Correctional Centre. “I will never regain the person I once was.”

There has to be a better way of coping with people who have mental health issues. As a society we cannot continue to jail desperate cries for help.

That’s the urgent message in Unlocking Change: Decriminalizing Mental Health Issues in Ontario, a powerful and forward-looking new report from the John Howard Society of Ontario. It calls on Premier Kathleen Wynne’s government to invest far more heavily in community-based and clinical mental health care as the province rolls out the next phase of a 10-year strategy to help people with mental illness. “The justice system should not be seen as the first viable access point for treatment,” the report cautions.

Costly as reforms will be, it’s far costlier in both human and economic terms to jail people than to care for them in the community.

“For years, the criminal justice system has responded to those with mental health issues with little success … because the justice system is the wrong place,” says Jacqueline Tasca, a policy analyst at the society’s Centre of Research, Policy and Program Development who co-authored the report. “Our legal and correctional systems are designed for punishment and accountability, not therapeutic intervention.”

That’s clear from the notorious cases of Ashley Smith and Edward Snowshoe, two deeply troubled people afflicted by depression and other issues who died by their own hands while languishing in solitary confinement in the federal prison system.

Mental illness and substance abuse are both endemic among Canada’s prison inmates, and both are more effectively treated in the community before they lead to criminalization and incarceration. In that light the report calls for “bold and immediate action” to decriminalize mental illness and to:

– Make sure Ontarians of all ages have “meaningful access” to psychiatrists and clinical care, which is far from the case now.

– Invest in a “core basket” of community based facilities and services across Ontario including in-patient and outpatient beds, crisis intervention and harm-reduction programs.

– And to have “system navigators” steer people to crisis intervention, care, respite and counselling.

That hardly exhausts the priorities identified in this report.  Queen’s Park also needs to provide more supportive housing and crisis beds for vulnerable people.

And Ontarians with mental health problems who are placed in jail — including the 60 per cent who haven’t been tried and are presumed innocent — should have round-the-clock access to psychiatric and medical care. They shouldn’t be placed in solitary confinement. And when they are discharged, meaningful community supports and housing should be available.

There’s more in the report that Queen’s Park could usefully act on. But what’s needed first and foremost is an attitude adjustment. A compassionate society should not rely on its courts and prisons to be the first responders for people with mental health issues who cry for help. We can do better than that.

< http://www.thestar.com/opinion/editorials/2015/08/17/stop-criminalizing-mental-illness-editorial.html >

Tags: corrections, crime prevention, disabilities, featured, Health, ideology, mental Health, standard of living

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