Sep 4

Written by: admin
04/09/2007 5:21 AM

Ottawa (August 31, 2007) – Canada’s major national mental health coalition expressed enthusiastic support for today’s launch by the Prime Minister of the long awaited Mental Health Commission of Canada. I am confident that the planned 3-pronged approach of an anti-stigma strategy, the knowledge exchange centre, and the development of a national strategy to improve services on the ground, will produce results,” said Constance McKnight, co-chair of the Canadian Alliance on Mental Illness and Mental Health (CAMIMH).

‘The Commission will keep a strong national spot light on our needs and issues. But we believe that it will do much more that. It can change not only attitudes but more importantly can help change the lives of those faced with mental health challenges,” she added.

For nearly a decade CAMIMH had been calling for a national mechanism to get provinces to work together with the federal government and non-governmental groups on a much needed National Strategy on Mental Illness and Mental Health. Canada remains the only G8 country without such a strategy.

“The plan for the Commission has not been thought up by bureaucrats in their offices, but comes out of the consensus we as a community have been able to build over the last decade,” said Ms McKnight. “In 1998, a number of us leading national mental health organizations agreed to put our differences aside in order to work together to get mental health on the national agenda when we saw that all the attention on health was ignoring mental health. That is when we formed CAMIMH, although we had been working together loosely for five years already under the Mental Illness Awareness Week campaign,” added Ms McKnight.

Ms. McKnight explained that CAMIMH has been talking and advocating together as consumers, families, community caregivers and professionals because they knew that the only way to get their issues heard was to stand together in one voice. “And it worked,” she says. “First we convinced the Senate Committee to hold hearings on mental health. We never imagined how strong allies Senators Keon and Kirby would become. Then the Senate Committee listened to people across Canada and many minds produced that stellar report ‘Out of the Shadows at Last’. Now we have a tremendous group of individuals appointed today as Board members to lead Canada into the development of national strategy. These are people who understand the issues from the ground up and who have a consumer focus, just as CAMIMH has had. We look forward to working with them over the coming months and years to turn things around for good.”

About CAMIMH
CAMIMH’s mission is to promote and facilitate the development, adoption, and implementation of a national action plan on mental illness and mental health. CAMIMH was founded in 1998 to get mental health on the national agenda and bring together the voices of the major groups that span the continuum of mental health. The 19 members now represent consumers and their families, health care and social service providers, professional associations, and community and research organizations. A full list of members is available on the website.

For information, contact:
Constance McKnight
Co-Chairperson, CAMIMH
(905) 682-2423
(289)213-1383
www.camimh.ca
www.miaw.ca

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