Mental Health in Canada

Why Canada's Mental Health System is Failing Its C: Low Staffing : "Many psychiatric treatment and residential units have deplorable levels of staffing. In several mental health facilities it is not unusual t..."

Many psychiatric treatment and residential units have deplorable levels of staffing. In several mental health facilities it is not unusual to find only one staff on duty per shift. How is it possible to meet the varied needs of residents with psychiatric disabilities with only one person in charge? The answer is that it isn't. This situation is almost a guaranteed recipe for staff burnout. In some facilities the workers are paid a reasonable living wage. These workers are almost always unionized. The problem is that these residential units will have the worst staffing situations as their employers will state that they can't afford any additional staff. I sometimes wonder how much benefit the unions are actually giving the workers in these cases. Yes, the workers are getting paid a living wage bu at what cost to their health and well being. The other situation that I have seen is where there is a better staff to client ratio but each worker is being paid a poverty level wage. Th...

A few days ago I was talking about the quality of life of your average resident living in some kind of residential community treatment setting. I have personally worked in two such facilities. Overall the quality of life of your typical resident is poor. One of the reasons for this is that governments are simply not providing the necessary resources and supports to improve the quality of life of the severely mentally ill client. There are two many layers of bureaucracies and agencies that often have very different agendas and work at cross purposes with each other. There is a paucity of front line workers as too much of the allocated funding goes into keeping the bureaucratic machine running. A lot of paper gets pushed and meetings go on ad nausea but the end product consumers are not being well served. The front line workers are in a much better position to know the needs of their clients as the clients are usually closer to the residential care and life skills workers than anyone...