By Angela Burton
Mental health community advocates expect action on the Tory election promise to change the Mental Health Act when the Ontario legislature returns this fall.
Ottawa Centre MPP Richard Patten struggled through last session to amend the act to give doctors the power to admit schizophrenics and people with other mental illnesses to psychiatric hospitals as “involuntary patients” if they were likely to hurt themselves or others.
“The situations are tragic and we have to wait until somebody literally endangers themselves or someone else, literally beats up their mother or shoots somebody or commits suicide,” says Patten.
Patten tried to get his bill through three times, but it died when the provincial election was called in May of this year.
His cause, however, gained momentum during the election campaign when Premier Mike Harris promised Ontarians he would amend the Mental Health Act to ensure people who pose a danger to themselves or others could be forced off the streets and into treatment.
“We get into an election and low and behold, what happens? The government, Mr. Harris, announces that he’s going to do essentially what my bill called for. But he gave it a different pretext which was clean up the streets, get rid of the squeegee kids and those people who are mentally ill,” says Patten.
Patten is now willing to overlook partisan politics on this issue and says he will share his personal knowledge with the government if they reintroduce the main elements of his bill as government legislation.
To date, however, the government has released few details about how they will deliver on their election promise. All they will say is that the health ministry is currently reviewing the existing legislation.
“The first step is to take a look at implementation issues – how to translate wishes into policy,” says Alexandra Brown, spokesperson for the Ontario Ministry of Health and Long Term Care.
The sooner the government acts the better, according to some advocates close to the issue who stress changes to act are long overdue.
“The current Mental Health Act is an institution-based act and it’s really a policing act for that matter,” says Janice Wiggins, executive director of the Schizophrenia Society of Ontario.
In recent decades provincial policy has shifted away from institutionalization and towards community integration of mentally ill people but mental health legislation has not reflected that reality, says Wiggins.
She agrees with Patten that when people with mental illnesses are integrated into the wider community, there is a greater need to be able to intervene in situations where someone poses a threat to themselves or another member of the community.
“We certainly acknowledge and recognize persons with schizophrenia are certainly a danger to themselves [in some instances]”, says Wiggins. “If we were to have the changes we have been asking for for years and years it [would] move it to a care-based criteria.”
The Schizophrenia Society of Ontario wholeheartedly supported Patten’s bill, Wiggins says, and is also looking forward to seeing long-awaited government action in the next session.
Patten says he too is still trying to get a sense of what the government plans to propose and how committed they are to following through on their campaign promise.
If there is no action, he’s prepared to reintroduce his private member’s bill to try to get it passed in the legislature, again.