THUNDER BAY - The region's hospital hopes to reduce the stigma surrounding mental illness and allow more people to seek the treatment they need.
Mental Illness Awareness Week kicked off on Monday and staff from the Thunder Bay Health Sciences Centre, along with patients, and family members, held the Mental Illness Awareness Walk around the hospital grounds.
“It’s to bring awareness to mental illness and recognize as a community that it is something that we need to start dealing with even more,” said Dr. Peter Voros, director of mental health at the Thunder Bay Regional Health Sciences Centre. “It’s an opportunity to really try and help people in the general community that there are people out there really suffering and we need to do what we can as a community to try to help them.”
According to Voros, when compared to the rest of the province, the number of people seeking treatment for mental illness and addiction in the region is more than double.
Voros said there has been a lot of speculation around why addiction and mental health rates are so high in the region.
“I think it has a lot to do with the economy and what it’s like to live in the Northwest,” he said. “And the services that we have available. We work very hard to provide services, but when you have a high portion of numbers of people looking for service and your resources don’t meet that, people become more ill.”
Voros explained that the Health Sciences Centre has been working to improve mental health services, including working on the length of stay in the adult mental health unit, adding a psychiatrist to the emergency department, recruiting additional psychiatrists in the area, and working with community groups to get people access to service quicker.
Wilhelmina Hodder, who was diagnosed with bi-polar disorder, has been in and out of the hospital for the past two years. She said that her experience accessing services has been good, but more work needs to be done.
“From the first time I was there and as I progressed through it, there was more programs,” she said. “I found it was improving. They need to improve more. There needs to be more education, more programs, more funding, and more rooms so you can have meetings.”
Hodder also believes that the city needs a larger facility to cut down on the wait times for people seeking treatment.
“There’s too long of a wait in emergency or three days in a room waiting to get in,” she said. “That’s difficult. You are already under stress, you need to get the people under that stress to relax and start undoing that.”
Treatment should not only focus on the patient alone, Hodder added, but family members as well, who may not understand mental illness.
“I think mental health needs a lot of different, original thinking and treatment,” she said. “It’s not just a pill.”
Hodder believes that there is less stigma around mental health, but it still exists. Voros agrees, adding that the community has come a long way in the last 20 years he has worked in the profession, but more work needs to be done.
“People were very cautious to talk about having mental health difficulties,” he said. “I think events like this help people recognize that it’s okay to talk about it and whoever we are, it hits all walks of life, no matter your socio-economic status or where you live. I think we’re getting there, but we still have a ways to go.”
