Stigma attached to mental illness a "national embarrassment": CMA

From cma.ca - 18 August 2008:

By Patrick Sullivan

The stigma attached to mental illness is so pervasive it can affect almost all aspects of Canadians' lives, from the people they marry to the workers they hire, a new poll conducted for the CMA indicates.

"The results don't paint a very flattering picture," CMA President Brian Day said of poll, which was part of the CMA's 2008 National Report Card on the state of Canada's health care system. "When only 50% of us would tell a friend that a family member has a mental illness while 72% would disclose a cancer diagnosis, there's something seriously wrong.

"We are looking at the final frontier of socially acceptable discrimination," he added. "It's a national embarrassment."

The mental health results, from an Ipsos Reid online survey of 2,024 Canadian adults, have a margin of error of ± 2.2%. The survey was conducted prior to the CMA's Aug. 18-20 annual meeting in Montreal, where mental health issues took centre stage. Other findings included:

• almost half of Canadians (46%) think the term "mental illness" is used as an excuse for bad behaviour;


• a solid majority of Canadians would not have a family doctor (61%) or hire a lawyer (58%) who has a mental illness;


• 55% would not marry someone who has a mental illness;


• 27% of respondents are fearful of being around people experiencing serious mental illness;


• 15% of respondents had themselves received a previous diagnosis of clinical depression, the most common mental illness.
  

Despite their generally negative attitudes, almost three-quarters of respondents (72%) agreed that funding to treat mental illness should be on a par with funding for physical illnesses such as cancer. The Ipsos Reid overview of the results (www.cma.ca) concluded: "In the view of most Canadians, mental health is not given the priority it ought to have within the health care system."

To read the entire story, click here.

To read the full Ipsos Reid survey, entitled 8th Annual National Report Care on Health Care (August 2008), click here.

Public engagement in setting priorities in health care

From the July 1st edition of the Canadian Medical Association Journal:

By Rebecca A. Bruni, BA, BScN, Andreas Laupacis, MD, MSc, and Douglas K. Martin, PhD, for the University of Toronto Priority Setting in Health Care Research Group.

Setting priorities in health care means allocating limited resources so that some programs are supported and others are not (Box 1, below). For more than a decade, patients, scholars and government reports have asserted that the public should have greater involvement in setting health care priorities (1), but progress on this front in Canada has been slow. We believe the merits of public involvement are compelling and in keeping with a democratic society's desire for an informed, fully engaged citizenry. In this commentary, we review the value of public engagement, address the perceived barriers and suggest ways forward.


Reference:
1. New B, editor. Rationing: talk and action in healthcare. London (UK): Blackwell BMJ Books; 1997.

To read the entire article, click here (PDF).