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May Day for mental health

Tomorrow is Spirit Day. The Spirit of the North Healthcare Foundation, together with our friends across the street at the Jim Pattison Broadcast Group, are working together to raise money for better healthcare in Prince George and across Northern B.
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Tomorrow is Spirit Day.

The Spirit of the North Healthcare Foundation, together with our friends across the street at the Jim Pattison Broadcast Group, are working together to raise money for better healthcare in Prince George and across Northern B.C.

This year, the goal is to raise $70,000 towards improving mental health and addictions care in the region.

Judy Neiser, the executive director of Spirit of the North, says the growing focus by the foundation on mental health and addiction care is donor driven.

In other words, people have stepped forward with their cheque book wanting to make a difference in this specific area, often because they have been traumatically affected through the suffering of a loved one and want to do more to help prevent others from going through the same kind of pain.

Mental health and addictions are the black sheep of medicine, both within the medical community and within society at large. Being a surgeon comes with far more respectability than being a psychiatrist. Researching treatments for cancer or diabetes earns far more praise than developing new regimes to combat alcoholism. That's not a criticism of healthcare practitioners; it's simply a recognition that illnesses and the professionals who treat them come with an embedded hierarchy.

So a Spirit Day devoted to mental health and addictions comes with its own challenges. If the pediatric ward is in need of equipment or other resources, it's easy as your A-B-Cs to raise money because it's for the kids. People get in line to give. To put it harshly, getting folks to donate towards treatments for schizophrenics, meth heads, crack addicts and alcoholics is a different story.

Fortunately, that view is changing.

The effects of mental health and addictions have penetrated society deep enough that, like cancer, everyone has been touched in some way. Every adult knows a recovering addict. Every adult knows someone who continues to struggle with mental health issues. For more and more Canadians, finding that person requires only a mirror.

Even the language is a barrier towards recognizing these health issues as legitimate. Both mental health and addictions are seen as somehow separate from other ailments. Blaming the victims is common, because they are weak, they bring their suffering upon themselves and/or they're exaggerating their condition to attract attention, receive financial aid and avoid working and other responsibilities.

Referring to addiction and mental health conditions as diseases elevates them to equal standing with cancer, diabetes and other serious illnesses. That's where they belong but most people can't shake their health prejudices, even when they know better.

As soon as those prejudices are pulled back and passing judgment is discarded, diagnosing and treating addictions and mental illness becomes solely about providing care, managing symptoms, relieving suffering and improving quality of life. That's the appropriate response, of course, for illnesses that don't discriminate by gender, race, culture, education, wealth or geography.

The Canadian Mental Health Association estimates the annual cost of mental illness to the national healthcare system at about $8 billion. This doesn't factor in further economic costs (lost wages, decreased business productivity, job loss), nor does it include the harm caused to personal and family finances through bankruptcies and failed mortgages.

For relief (of both physical and mental illness), many turn to self-medication, the first step towards addiction.

To turn things around, as with any sickness, the first steps in the right direction are recognition of the problem and a willingness to get help.

There are many agencies besides Northern Health working to help those with mental illness and addiction, as well as their loved ones, which is good because the problems are significant and require everyone working together.

Tomorrow's Spirit Day deserves all the help it can get so the Spirit of the North Healthcare Foundation can help Northern Health do more to make a difference.

Think about the people you know struggling with addictions and mental illness.

Please give.

-- Editor-in-chief Neil Godbout