Revised Ontario Mental Health Plan announced by PC-government aims to address significant issues

BY PAUL JUNOR

On Tuesday, March 3^rd, 2020, the PC-government announced, “Roadmap to Wellness: A Plan to Build Ontario’s Mental Health and Addictions System.” The vision of this mental and health strategy is to have, “A province where all Ontarians have access to high-quality, easily accessible, mental health and addictions support throughout their lifetime, where and when they need it”.

This announcement came almost ten years after the previous Liberal government launched  Ontario’s Comprehensive Mental  Health Strategy  titled, “Open Minds, Healthy Minds,” whose goals was to “Support mental health throughout life from childhood to old age and to provide the integrated services and supports that Ontarians need  if they experience a mental illness.”

The emphasis then was on children and youth. The revised plan announced by Health Minister Christine Elliot envisions the creation of a Mental Health and Addictions Centre of Excellence. This centre will be “The coordinating, central provincial body that will enable and drive the effective implementation of the plan four pillars. These pillars are i) improving quality (ii) expanding existing services (iii) implementing innovative solution and (iv) improving access. The government hopes that by centralizing services it will be able to make improvements in wait times and increase the level of services for those who need access to mental help.”

Elliot announced that $20 million will be made available to invest in a program titled, “Mindabilty” which is based on cognitive therapy and is intended to treat approximately 80,000 people in its first year of implementation.  The fact that it will be covered by OHIP means that those who are over 10 years of age and require help to deal with anxiety and depression will not have to pay directly. In the past, this was an exorbitant cost that many parents had to pay directly if they did not have private benefits coverage.

One hopes that with decreased wait times more youth will be able to access immediate mental help resources quickly to ensure that they receive timely and quick response.

There have been widespread responses from various sectors to Ontario’s plan to revamp mental health services. Many observers noted that the PC-government eliminated $330 million from mental health spending in its spring, 2019 budget. Furthermore, health ministry representatives have not revealed details with respect to how the money will be spent. This will no doubt come when the spring budget is released within the next few weeks, as there will be an additional $400 million allocated.

College Student Alliance (CSA), Council of Ontario Universities (COU) and Colleges Ontario (CO) noted in a press release on March 3^rd that “The provincial government will  continue to support mental health in Ontario and that there will be significant targeted investments to support integrated accessible, community-based  student mental health  care in the upcoming Ontario budget.”

Addictions and Mental Health Ontario (AMHO) and a coalition of other groups in a joint statement on March 3^rd noted, “Collectively we have seen many plans on mental health and addictions over the last ten years. Above all, our clients and the people who support them need action.”  There is still so much that remains to be known about the feasibility, practicability and accessibility of this revamped mental health strategy.