Speaking notes for David O’Toole
Informing the Future: Mental Health Indicators for Canada
(Economic Club of Canada luncheon)
Thursday, January 22
11:30AM
Ottawa, Ontario
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Good afternoon. I am very pleased to be able to participate in today’s release.
Thank you, your Excellency, for your presence and your continuing support for improving care
and treatment for mental illness.
Thank you, Doctors Goldbloom and Goldner for your passionate leadership and work in this
area.
And congratulations, Louise, to you and your colleagues at the Commission, on the
achievement we are marking today.
Roger Cohen is a journalist and writer who works for the New York Times. He has a recent
book, “The Girl from Human Street”, which is a family memoir and history with his mother as its
central figure.
Cohen describes the genesis of the book as his discovery, in an attic, when he was in his 30s,
of a box of letters and other writings that were testaments of his mother’s life living with mental
illness. In going through the material, including her suicide notes, he was able to develop a
chronology that helped explain retrospectively events in the life of his mother, and the family,
since her diagnosis in the 50s after the birth of her second child.
His father was a physician and included in the material in the attic was family tree that his father
had created. On the tree, he indicated with a dot each member of the family that had the same
kind of mental illness as his wife had lived with. As Cohen relates, there were more names with
dots than there were without.
There are many, many people with their own attics and their own unrevealed experiences of
living with mental illness, and I can think of no other organization in Canada that has worked as
effectively at changing that state of affairs, and removing the associated stigma, as the Mental
Health Commission of Canada.
The release today of these indicators continues the process of building awareness of the extent
to which mental illness and addiction will affect the lives of 7 million Canadians, each year.
CIHI has worked with the Mental Health Commission since its inception, as a partner in various
undertakings with respect to mental health and addiction research and data gathering.
CIHI undertakes its own work on mental health in Canada as well. For example, last fall, we
released our study on eating disorders and the compounding impact depression and anxiety
have on young women with eating disorders.
This spring we will release a report on child and youth mental health in Canada and how young
people access health services across the country. The study was spurred by the 44% increase
in Emergency Department visits for children and youth for mental disorders, over the last 7
years; and the 30% increase in hospitalizations. This is at a time when there has been a 13%
decrease in all other hospitalizations.
I would like to emphasize that the work CIHI undertakes in the area of mental health, and most
of the work undertaken in this area by partner and colleague organizations across the country,
is aligned with and guided by the priorities set out by the Mental Health Commission in its
document, Changing Directions, Changing Lives: The Mental Health Strategy for Canada.
In our view, the roadmap laid out by the Commission in that document is one of the abiding
contributions to the study and improvement of mental health in Canada of the last 20 years.
Another reason we are pleased to support the release of these indicators is because we too,
produce indicators on the performance of various aspects of the Canadian healthcare systems.
And we know that they build awareness, and understanding; and they change behaviour and
improve outcomes.
The release of the indicators today is an important achievement and milestone. However, there
remain really significant gaps in the data and information about mental health that we need to
address. We need comprehensive assessment data for patients across the country; we need
data and standards for community mental health services; and we need more information on atrisk groups, especially children and youth.
There is lots of work to do. We look forward to continuing our collaboration with the Mental
Health Commission, and colleague organizations across the country, in getting on with it.
Thank you for your attention and, once again, congratulations to the Commission on its
achievement.