Shelter for N.W.T. women with mental illness badly needed: advocate

Yellowknife's women's emergency shelter is the last resort for women without a safe place to sleep, but not all are welcome. 

In order to keep a safe environment for the majority, violent women with mental illness are turned away.

The shelter says a new facility specializing in housing the mentally ill is desperately needed.

"If we provided better mental health support and addiction services in the Northwest Territories, we would have a lot less homeless people," said Caroline Cochrane-Johnson, CEO of the Centre for Northern Families.

Cochrane-Johnson's dream is a new mental health facility with at least 20 beds, daily counselling, and support workers.
She runs the women's emergency shelter in Yellowknife. 

"It doesn't have to be a big institution that we send them away and we lock them up in," she said. "But they need clinicians that can actually work with them, and support people."

'I got nowhere to go'

"I got nowhere to go," said one woman, to whom CBC agreed to grant anonymity. 

She has a mental illness and is not allowed in the emergency shelter because of violent behaviour. Instead she sleeps in cars and hallways.

"I just need a roof over my head."

The facility that would provide that roof is, right now, just an idea, 

In the mean time, Cochrane-Johnson is lobbying the territorial government for more funding for the existing emergency shelter.

"The reality is communities don't have the resources to take care of people who have serious mental health concerns," she said. "It think it's irresponsible and negligent of our government to not provide for people who do not have capacity to care for themselves."

She says if the shelter had more staff, it could try to house the violent women that no one else will.

"Everybody wants to end homelessness, but nobody wants to talk about what the real issues are. The real issues are not that they don't have a house, it's because they have mental health (concerns) and addictions."