Good afternoon. My name is Cyara Bird, and I am the Daughters of the Vote delegate representing Dauphin-Swan River-Neepawa.
It is important to address the mental health crisis in our rural areas and its link to our correctional systems. As the wife and daughter of two very incredible correctional officers, I understand the dire need to fix our mental health system.
Mental health illnesses can begin in many different ways. I developed depression and anxiety at a very young age in my life due to bullying, and then later on in my life I developed severe and debilitating postpartum depression. For others, mental health illnesses can begin from childhood trauma, substance abuse, they can be born with it, or sometimes it just develops on its own later on in life.
Mental health resources are few and far between in our rural areas. In many rural areas they are insufficient, and in a lot of reserves they are non-existent.
When I needed to utilize these resources because I was being consumed by my postpartum depression, I couldn't. I tried, and nothing was available. I lost out on the first six months of my first-born daughter's life because of it. It also strained my marriage, because I couldn't physically get out of bed to take care of my household responsibilities, and I left everything on my husband's shoulders. That is time that I can never get back, and I resent the way that the mental health system is set up because of it.
Luckily, I have not yet developed postpartum depression since having my second child, and I pray every day that I do not develop it again.
I'm going to go off my script here to describe to the men in the room what having postpartum depression is like, because I found it very different from just having regular depression. It was like this dark cloud surrounding you, hugging you every day, and it was impossible to get out of. When I finally got out of it and started seeing the sun again, it was like being in heaven. It was really hard, and it was even hard to describe to my husband, because he didn't quite understand, he just knew that I wasn't well.
I'm going to go back to my script here now.
In 2018, the Washington Post published an article with very shocking statistics. The article states that indigenous people make up 5% of the Canadian population, but 27% of the population in Canadian correctional facilities. Of all federally sentenced women, 43% are indigenous. The jaw-dropping statistic here is that indigenous youth only make up 8% of the Canadian youth population, but 46% of incarcerated youth.
The lack of mental health resources in our rural communities and our reserves directly contributes to these statistics significantly. We need to focus on implementing programs in these communities that would prevent people from coming into conflict with the law prior to incarceration. We also need to set up facilities where people with mental health illnesses can go instead of a correctional centre when their needs are beyond correction officers' capabilities. Incarceration does nothing to help a lot of these individuals, because they are not getting the help that they need.
Investing in proper mental health resources for these communities would bring down crime rates undoubtedly. If we can reduce the numbers from the source, we will lighten the load on our correctional system.
Thank you.