10 Culture

Mental Health and Sexual Assault: Part Ill

Grant Bachand
Team Member

Ma health is something that causes a buzz with some
groups, and stigma with others. Here at UNBC we are
fortunate enough to have services on campus for students
that help us deal with many of the challenges that come

our way being a student. That however is not always the
case when people leave the university or live in the greater
community of Prince George. In Prince George, Northern
Health is the all encompassing deliverer of health care.
People have come far in reducing the stigma around mental
health over the last 10-20 years, and even though things

are getting better, they still have miles to go. Organizations
dealing with mental health still need to improve greatly with
how they treat people with mental health and those who
advocate to make things better get more than a couple road
blocks to contend with.

Over the Edge sat down with someone who has first hand
knowledge of the mental health services in Prince George
and gave the truth about the mental health world that not
everyone might know. Penny-Lynn Davidson sits on an
organization known as the Prince George Mental Health
Consumer Council. It is an organization that is made up

of Consumers of Mental Health services in Prince George,
working to improve those services and create a community
for people who have a mental illness. In order to utilize
mental health services people must go to various doors to
get into the system; a doctor, the critical response unit, or
the emergency room at the hospital if it is serious enough.
However those doors can sometimes be challenging for
people to open, especially if you are from a low-income
household. Once in the system you will be referred to either
a psychiatrist or counselor, and given a case manager.

However, referrals can take months to be processed and
during that time you will have to learn to cope with
whatever mental illness you have. The reason why it takes
so long for the referral to get you an appointment with

a doctor or counselor is simply a lack of resources anda
huge demand. Before you think Prince George is falling
behind the rest of the world, Davidson says Prince George
is one of the better communities. In Vancouver people can
sometimes wait years to see a mental health professional.
Once in the community, there are many different groups
that can help you cope, build a support network, and
heal. However, according to Davidson that also gives way
to one of the biggest problems in the mental health field
in Prince George:groups not working together. The big

problem revolves around control. An example Davidson
used was that Northern Health might not want to refer
a patient to the Canadian Mental Health Association
because they want to remain in control of that patient.

The reason why these groups like to remain in control

of a patient and have no interest in working together
with other groups is because of a couple various factors,
but one of the biggest is because they all receive their
funding from the same “pot”, according to Davidson.
Northern Health distributes the funding for all mental
health groups in Prince George and therefore controls
how these organizations operate. One of the fears is that
if the different groups support various projects then their
funding could be cut, thus making things harder on the
organization. The budget for funding of mental health does
not grow to accommodate the different organizations.

Funding is not the only part of the picture when it comes
to the many mental health groups working together.
Information dissemination is something that according
to Davidson does not happen. Once a month the various
mental health groups in Prince George get together and
talk about challenges in their field with the Northern
Health Authority. The information collected at these
meetings is supposed to be distributed to all frontline
staff members in order to help them do their job more
effectively. Davidson says that just doesn’t happen,

“Northern Health isn’t terribly interested in
what the advisory board has to say. It isn’t
of much concern what these organizations
have to say in regard to their policies)

The Consumer Council’s idea to help solve that problem
is to bring in a third party advocate who can help people
who suffer from mental health related issues navigate
the system, to lobby various groups on the person’s
behalf, and other various duties. In January 2015 the
Consumer Council put out an information package to all
the various mental health groups in Prince George to get
their input on the idea of this advocate and, according
to Davidson, not a single group got back to them.

They wanted to get the various group’s input on what

they would want to see for the role of the advocate and

how they could make that program work. Maureen Davis,
the executive director of the Prince George branch of the
Canadian Health Association, spoke to Over the Edge about
the idea of an advocate. She believes that we need to ensure
that we are not duplicating services that are already in place.
An example she used is if a person is wanting to speak to a
review board about funding an advocate is not appropriate
for that but if someone spoke with legal aid that would be.

Dave Halikowski, president of the British Columbia
Schizophrenia Society, said his position was that Prince
George would greatly benefit from a third party advocate.
Halikowski would like to see an advocate that has a
similar role as the one for children. He would hope the
advocate would come from the province directly and

not Northern Health. The hope is the advocate would be
independent. Halikowski stated that, “We get a lot of our
funding from Northern Health and if we start complaining
about Northern Health and the way they handle the
services, it jeopardizes your funding. It is as simple as
that.” That way they don’t have to worry about “towing
the party line” or else they would lose their funding.

Over the Edge attended a Consumer Council meeting where
Mayor Lyn Hall was in attendance. Mayor Hall gave a couple
comments about how the City of Prince George can work
with the Consumer Council. Hall believes that working to
get an advocate in Prince George would be something the
city could look at through their social planning department,
which was “decimated” by the former council. Currently,
Chris Bone is in charge of that department. The city is trying
to reach out to the community in order to understand
different needs of groups like the consumer council and

see if there is a place or the city to work with them.

In the end this advocate would simple help people figure out
how to navigate a very complicated system. It is important to
understand that some people who suffer from mental illness
can advocate on their own behalf. The advocate is there to
help those people who can’t always help themselves. Davidson
said that when you suffer from a mental illness sometimes it
takes all you effort just to get out of bed, and you can’t spend
hours waiting in a line to speak to a government agency.
According to others on the Consumer Council for a person to
get up and complain to the hospitals complain department
when they suffer abuses from hospital staff is like a parolee