You probably heard last week that our world-class city is in a mental health crisis, according to Police Chief Jim Chu and Mayor Gregor Robertson.
Sadly, this isn't news.
I'll remind you of why near the bottom of this entry.
First to the latest stats from the Vancouver Police Department.
Since January 2012, officers responded to 96 serious incidents ranging from suicides to random violent attacks against citizens. All were committed by people with severe mental health issues.
Incidents included elderly women being stomped in the head, multiple stabbings and assaults on children as young as three years old. One man was eviscerated in front of a movie theatre.
Some more stats:
- Within the past three years, the emergency room at St. Paul's Hospital saw a 43 per cent increase in patients with severe mental illness and/or addiction.
- Mental illness is a factor in approximately 21 per cent of incidents handled by VPD officers and 25 per cent of the total time spent on calls where a report is written.
- In one 15-month period, 26 innocent victims were attacked and injured, some very seriously, in 11 separate incidents.
A quote from Chu: “The police are becoming the first point of contact for those who are severely mentally ill, and that is wrong. These people require health care, support, and medical treatment, not the criminal justice system."
A quote from Robertson: “The police should not, and cannot, continue to be the first point of contact. Lives are being put at risk and we need senior levels of government to step up and provide the resources they are responsible for.”
Serious stuff.
But is it news?
Yes, recent stats and anecdotes are news.
But the city mired in a mental health crisis is not.
Not when you consider what Chu was saying way back in January 2008. That's when the VPD released a report whose title pretty much told the story back then: Lost in Transition: How a lack of capacity in the mental health system is failing Vancouver's mentally ill and draining police resources.
A quote from that report's executive summary: "VPD officers, along with the citizens with whom they come in contact, are bearing the burden of a mental health system that lacks resources and efficient information sharing practices, often with tragic consequences."
One of the key recommendations of that report requested an urgent response centre be set up to treat people with severe mental health issues. That never happened.
Last week, the chief and the mayor put forward another set of recommendations, including the need for 300 beds dedicated to people with mental illness and "an enhanced form of urgent care [crisis centre] that can ensure consistent and expert care of individuals in crisis situations, located at a Vancouver hospital."
So, yeah, it's crisis out there.
But it was in 2008, too.
And it will only stop being a crisis when Chu and Robertson no longer have to call a press conference to talk about it. I hope to find out what Health Minister Terry Lake thinks about all this in an interview this week.
mhowell@vancourier.com
