Mental Illness: Union of B.C. Municipalities

Union of B.C. Municipalities: Vancouvers mayor and police chief say their city has a crisis situation with people with severe mental illness. They have asked the province to consider, among other things, reopening the Riverview psychiatric hospital as a modern centre of excellence in mental-health care. Other municipal politicians, gathered in Vancouver for the Union of B.C. Municipalities annual convention, are also asking for new early-intervention facilities for mental health and addictions, as they and their police departments wrestle with problems caused by mentally ill people. , according to Times Colonist. Once, they would have been put in institutions such as Riverview Hospital, which opened 100 years ago as the Hospital of the Mind in rural Coquitlam. At its peak in the mid-1950s, it housed nearly 5,000 patients. The term insane asylum fell into disfavour long ago, but asylum is what some mentally ill people need. The province should heed the call from B.C.s municipalities to provide more secure spaces for psychiatric treatment. In Victoria, 10 people, most with mental-health issues, accounted for 3,000 negative contacts with police over a six-year period. Mentally ill people with nowhere else to turn are also a disproportionate drain on hospital emergency departments and social services. (www.immigrantscanada.com). As reported in the news.