One in five Canadians will suffer from mental illness in their lifetime – so why is only seven per cent of publicly funded health care spending in Canada dedicated to mental health?
In an op-ed for Healthy Debate, Victoria Wiebe, Research Analyst at the Ivey International Centre for Health Innovation and a Psychology student at Western University, calls for better coordination among primary and mental health care.
Wiebe points out that people seeking mental health services often see family physicians or emergency doctors first, who can lack the appropriate training to administer most mental health services. Thus, they emphasize referral in treatment guidelines, often favouring expensive specialists over affordable community care providers.
"Part of the reason physicians don’t refer patients to community services is that physicians are often unaware that these services exist," Wiebe says. "Improving funding for coordination and outreach between community mental health services and primary care services can address this issue, but this requires resources."
