The term 鈥渋nsane asylum鈥� fell into disfavour long ago, but asylum is what some mentally ill people need. The province should heed the call from sa国际传媒鈥檚 municipalities to provide more secure spaces for psychiatric treatment.
Vancouver鈥檚 mayor and police chief say their city has a crisis situation with people with severe mental illness. They have asked the province to consider, among other things, reopening the Riverview psychiatric hospital as a 鈥渕odern centre of excellence鈥� in mental-health care. Other municipal politicians, gathered in Vancouver for the Union of sa国际传媒 Municipalities annual convention, are also asking for new early-intervention facilities for mental health and addictions, as they and their police departments wrestle with problems caused by mentally ill people.
In Victoria, 10 people, most with mental-health issues, accounted for 3,000 negative contacts with police over a six-year period. Mentally ill people with nowhere else to turn are also a disproportionate drain on hospital emergency departments and social services.
Once, they would have been put in institutions such as Riverview Hospital, which opened 100 years ago as the Hospital of the Mind in rural Coquitlam. At its peak in the mid-1950s, it housed nearly 5,000 patients.
In the Victorian era, mental hospitals were known as insane asylums and many were dismal places where people who didn鈥檛 fit in were deposited and forgotten. Insanity 鈥� and the definition was broad 鈥� was a cause for shame. While 20th-century sa国际传媒 institutions were not as bad as that, the name Riverview still resonates darkly for a generation of British Columbians, partly because our society still struggles with the stigma associated with mental illness.
Dr. Andre Masters, now a Victoria psychiatrist, saw the good and the bad in such institutions. He began his career in 1961 in one of England鈥檚 largest mental hospitals. He said much good was being done there, but he also found much that was wrong. His findings led to a British national inquiry that uncovered patient neglect, fraud and maladministration, echoes of the past when patients were subject to abuse and questionable treatment.
More enlightened views came to the fore. As community-based psychiatric care became more prominent, many mental hospitals were phased out 鈥� Riverview鈥檚 last patients were moved out in 2012.
That hasn鈥檛 worked for everyone, Masters says.
鈥淪ome people are not coping and will never cope,鈥� he said. 鈥淭hey need some sort of care.鈥�
Mentally ill people without resources are susceptible to drug abuse as they try to self-medicate.
鈥淭hey should be in the country, in a pleasant environment鈥� where they can receive competent treatment, Masters said, 鈥渁way from the people pushing drugs.鈥�
He says those shouldn鈥檛 be massive places like Riverview, but smaller centres like the Vancouver Island Health Authority鈥檚 Seven Oaks Tertiary Mental Health Facility, which has 35 beds for adults with severe and persistent mental illnesses.
In Victorian times, people with obvious mental illnesses were rounded up and warehoused in mental hospitals with little or no treatment. People put in these grim places often couldn鈥檛 get out. Now, those in distress have difficulty getting into safe, secure places where effective treatments can be administered.
We still need asylums, in the true sense of the word 鈥� places of peace, safety and effective therapy, refuges for people in distress who can鈥檛 cope by themselves.
