I was pleased to announce last week our government awarded a contract to Virgo Planning and Evaluation Incorporated to assist the province in developing a provincial mental health and addictions strategy, to support long-term health and better quality of life for Manitobans. The strategy will look at the needs of children, youth, and adults for both mental health and addictions services.
As Manitobans recently marked the 66th annual Canadian Mental Health Association Mental Health Week, it very fitting that we are taking this next step to identify the gaps, clarify the needs and develop a strategy to make our mental health and addictions programs and services better co-ordinated and more accessible.
The consulting team, under the leadership of Dr. Brian Rush and Adair Roberts, possesses a considerable breadth of national and clinical knowledge and experience in mental health and substance use system design and planning. Adair Roberts recently facilitated the Opioid Conference and Summit on behalf of the Canadian Centre on Substance Abuse and Health Canada in Ottawa last November, which concluded with specific action commitments from provinces and health stakeholders.
Mental health and addictions are two areas of health-care that are often closely linked, with a high percentage of people who deal with mental health issues also struggling with addiction issues. Currently the systems to help them are set up separately and have a lot of different infrastructure. We’re hoping to coordinate the systems better to bring together the addictions and mental health system and also look at where we’re not doing well in allowing people to access the system, to get into either the mental health or addiction system to get the help that they need. It is important to have these two together, but how we do that is also important. We want to ensure that we have experts looking at how the two systems should be working together and asking: Where there are common links? Where do we have duplication in the system? Where do we have gaps in the system?
Governments, communities, families and individuals have a role to play to help Manitobans achieve healthy living and to ensure timely access to quality, comprehensive mental health and addictions services. Virgo Planning and Evaluation Inc. is expected to present a strategic framework with recommendations to the government by December 31. Our government is looking forward to seeing this strategy, and will continue our ongoing work to ensure Manitobans have the mental health and addictions supports they need.
For more information on addictions services, visit www.gov.mb.ca/healthyliving/addictions. For more information on mental health crisis and non-crisis regional services, visit: www.gov.mb.ca/healthyliving/mh/crisis.html.
