Mental health presents dilemmas for N.W.T.

Almost four years ago, the Northwest Territories government said one of its goals was to improve mental health and addictions services.

But the only department with a smaller budget this year than two years ago is Health and Social Services. The territory's main hospital still has no permanent psychiatrist, and where there were once three residential addictions treatment centres in the North, there is now only one.

In a report released last month, the Health Department suggests it is nevertheless meeting 98 per cent of the needs of people who come in for mental health treatment. But experiences on the ground seem otherwise, CBC reporter Richard Gleeson found out from the family of Angela Meyer. 

Meyer stepped out of her family home in Yellowknife last Nov. 27 for a cigarette and walked away. Diagnosed with mental illness seven years ago at age 15, she hasn't been seen or heard from since.

When she was first getting treatment, there was a permanent psychiatrist at Stanton Territorial Hospital in Yellowknife. The Meyers say their daughter benefited from the therapy. But the doctor was at the end of a long career in the north, and Angela was left with a rotating crew of psychiatrists from the south.

"Medications changed pretty much with every doctor. Some worked and some were way out. Some would work for a little while, and then they would increase some and decrease some," recalled Dean Meyers, her father.

"The psychiatrists were coming in three or four times a year."

Angela Meyer's sickness got to the point where she needed help that just wasn't available in the territory, which left her family with a difficult decision.   "When they first brought it up — and I knew they were going to be bringing this up, about sending her down south, because I knew the care wasn't here for her — and I automatically said no. I said no. She was born here, I think she should be able to stay in the Territories," Dean Meyer said.

"We let it sit like that for about a week, and then we had to finally realize it was probably the best for her. She needed the care."

Recruiting difficult

The N.W.T. Health Department says it's very difficult to recruit psychiatrists, because it's not a popular specialty and there is a global demand for them. It's unclear whether the department, or the Stanton Territorial Health Authority, is even trying to recruit one.

An equally big challenge, the territorial government says, is raising awareness of both mental illness and the care that is available.

In small attempt to address that, it's tailoring a mental health first-aid course to a Northern audience. The adapted two-day pilot program will be delivered this spring in Tuktoyaktuk and Fort McPherson, and will teach people to be aware of the signs and symptoms of mental illness and how to intervene and get support for someone in need.

Though it wasn't the case for Angela Meyer, mental illness is often intertwined with other issues, such as addiction, another area where the Health Department cutbacks are being felt. Almost half of the local addictions and mental health counsellors the department relies heavily on don't meet its own education standard. Over years the territorial government has also shut down all but one of its costly residential treatment centres.

Sara Chorostkowski, the Health Department official in charge of mental health and addictions care, acknowledged that some communities have to go without a mental health or addictions counsellor.

"But they all have access to a mental health/addictions counsellor," she said. "So it might be that the counsellor would have to travel into the community on a scheduled basis, like one week a month, or something like that."

The current approach is not making a dent in alcohol addiction, however. According to government statistics, the number of heavy drinkers in the territory has been steadily increasing over the last 15 years.

'We just went out and drank'

William Greenland first became addicted to liquor as a young teenager in Inuvik, when all around him were the ravages of the residential-school system that the federal government imposed on aboriginal Canadians (he himself didn't go to one).

"When you get thinking of it, then you want to forget about it right away, just go and drink instead of going and finding somebody to talk to about it," Greenland said. "We just went out and drank."

Today, Greenland runs a territory-wide radio station, following dramatic changes he's made in his life over the last seven years. But it took immense determination to give up alcohol and, at his addiction's worst, the Lysol and Listerine he was drinking.

Treating addictions can be a frustrating job for the counsellors, health practitioners and social workers involved. The success rate is very low, because it requires a person to change almost every aspect of her or his life — so much so that Byrne Richards, an addictions counsellor at the Tree of Peace Friendship Centre in Yellowknife, says beating addiction is as much or more about the individual trying to quit as it is about the programs available.

"I believe the government is doing the best it can," Richards said.

"Are there shortcomings? Absolutely. Absolutely. People are not there all the time. I can think of a couple of communities that haven't had a mental health and addictions worker on hand as a regular person for some time."