Canada's Mental Health

CITIZENS FOR MENTAL HEALTH

BACKGROUNDER

Mental Health
SCOPE OF THE ISSUE
Our mental health is affected by many factors including where we live, the state of our environment, genetics, our income and education level, and our relationships with friends and family. Positive mental health is a cornerstone of our overall well-being. Mentally healthy people are able to cope with the inevitable stress and strain of daily life and have the resilience to rebound from life-changing events such as loss of a loved one, loss of a job, or marriage breakdown. However, some leading health indicators show Canadians as a whole, and some groups in particular, are experiencing mental health problems in their lives. These problems exact a significant toll
An additional 1.8% had activity limitations due to frequent memory problems or periods of confusion. • Stress and mental health-related problems currently represent 40-50% of the short-term disability claims among employees of some of Canada's largest corporations. • The Canadian economy loses an estimated $30 billion a year in productivity due to mental illness and addiction problems. • Social conditions such as poverty, income disparities, homelessness and housing instability, income insecurity, racism, sexism, homophobia negatively impact mental health.

FEDERAL ACTION
Health promotion seeks to develop strategies that increase individual and community control over the determinants of health to improve overall health and promote social justice and equity. Mental health promotion builds on the above principles. It entails enhancing people’s resiliency and coping skills, and above all, their capacity to take control over their lives, thereby improving their mental health. Mental health promotion is targeted at the population as a whole, including people with mental illness. Policies and programs to promote mental health are pursued at every level of society, including the federal government. The Mental Health Promotion Unit (MHPU) was
Policies in a range of areas from income security to reducing stress in the workplace or programs such as suicide prevention or youth counselling all constitute health promoting initiatives. The following example related to health in the workplace could serve as a template for the development of mentally healthy policy in many areas of activity. Acting on the Ottawa Charter for Health Promotion’s call for “putting health on the agenda of policymakers in all sectors and at all levels” the authors of a recent report prepared for the Institute for Work and Health looked at the impact of information about the health consequences of unemployment and job insecurity. They evaluated the influence and potential of such information, and analysed barriers to utilizing it in employment policy-making. The authors conclude with three recommendations aimed at combining greater awareness of employment-related health consequences with traditional employment policy-making: • health policy-makers must act as the intellectual leaders in rephrasing health information in terms meaningful to employment policy-makers; • both health and employment policy-makers must work toward an increase in cross-departmental and cross-governmental initiatives as well as toward greater awareness of and accountability for the health consequences of employment