THE PRESENT MENTAL HEALTH SYSTEM

People who are seriously mentally ill have a hypomanic episode (nervous breakdown) will not seek help, yet the first requirement to get help is to ask for help.

Should you seek therapy, this is the procedure:

- You go to the mental health area of a hospital to ask if you could get therapy.

- You are handed a piece of paper with a 1 (800) number.

- When you call the number you get an answering machine reply to leave your number. - Then you play telephone tag until you finally get to talk to a live person.

- They ask you many questions, and if they feel you might qualify for therapy, you get permission to ask for therapy.

- You then return to the hospital and tell them you have permission to get therapy.

- They don't ask you if you have a history of suicidal or homicidal thoughts but may ask you if are presently considering suicide or homicide.

- If you say no, not right now, then the receptionist looks in the appointment book, and finds a date for a therapy session six weeks later.

- If you can wait for six weeks, you can get a number of sessions.

- If you do not need to return for three months your file is closed, and you start from the beginning again. In my opinion, you could not design a better system to fail!!

When are Alberta residents going to demand a system that actually works?

I would estimate that 50% of individuals that are diagnosed as being mentally ill actually are not. That 50% of individuals who are not mentally ill fall into several categories:

These are mental health conditions that can successfully be treated with a variety of methods:

- All those who suffer from Anxiety Disorders are not mentally ill.

- People who suffer from Post Traumatic Stress are not mentally ill.

- People who suffer from ADD are not mentally ill.

- People who suffer from the Fight or Flight Symptoms are not mentally ill.

Medication may help to deal with the symptoms of these conditions, but medication will never fix a learned behavior. My Plan For Mental Health Treatment: 1. Set up an independent oversite committee to monitor the mental health system.

2. There should be a tremendous increase in the number of mental health therapists, and an improvement in their training regarding learned behaviors, diet, exercise, and mental illnesses. Access to therapists has to be greatly increased.

3. We also need a tremendous increase in the number of psychologists. Their training needs to include the same things as the mental health therapists, except in much greater depth. Their job description should be to evaluate and direct their patients to the appropriate method or methods of treatment.

4. Psychiatry is the only discipline in medicine where the doctor does not look at the part of the body they are treating, according to Dr. Amen, a child psychiatrist who has done over 90,000 spec brain scans.

Psychiatrist’s training needs a complete overhauled for significant change to occur. Their training should include; diet, food allergies, exercise, talk therapy, spec brain scan imaging, flight or fight response emotion evaluation, and treatment. The use of supplements for brain health, street drugs, the use of prescription drugs for the control of the symptoms of the mental illnesses, and lastly how to successfully get off highly addictive drugs with the minimum of side effects.

Psychiatrists should start by taking the history of all the patient’s treatment options that have partially succeeded or failed to date, and followed up by a spec brain scan.

If the brain scan indicates that the patient has a learned behavior, a brain injury, a dietary issue, lacks exercise, etc., the patient should be directed to the appropriate treatment option or options.

As a last resort, prescription medication targeted specifically at reducing the symptoms of the patient should be prescribed. It should be noted that visits to psychiatrists are covered by Alberta Health Care, but appointments with psychologists are not, but definitely should be, in my opinion.

Sadly, when a patient suffering from a learned behavior sees a psychiatrist, the patient has simply prescribed anti-depressant medication for the symptom of the condition, rather than recommending that the patient get help in learning how to overcome the condition with meditation, which costs nothing.