Health Committee on May 28th, 2015

[Ghislain Beaulieu]

Yes, regularly.

Mr. Vigneault is from Quebec City. He knows other people in the community. Last week, I met another speaker, Richard Langlois, who has bipolar disorder. He has written on the topic and gives speeches. We have been invited to participate in a conference in Quebec this fall to talk about how we started our foundation, what we do and how we do it.

I think what we do is fairly unique in Quebec, and it's starting to spread from our region. We are proud of that because it proves that a community can take matters into its own hands. We don't always have to wait for others for something to happen. We can challenge ourselves and take charge.

[The Chair, Conservative, Ben Lobb]

Thank you very much.

Mr. Toet, for five minutes.

[Ghislain Beaulieu]

We must also be able to call on various governments to let them know that more can be done and that we can give them support.

[The Chair, Conservative, Ben Lobb]

Okay, thank you.

Mr. Toet, five minutes.

[Lawrence Toet, Conservative, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I want to start with our guest, Dr. Carleton.

It's very intriguing. You talked quite a bit about preventative strategies. In fact, you even talked about reducing PTSD—rather than treating it further on, actually reducing it and preventing it. I've seen for a long time, even in our regular health care system, that we need a paradigm shift. We really don't have a health care system; we actually have a sick care system. We need to look much more at a prevention model. It was very interesting to hear you speak many times about preventative measures going forward. I think we have a unique opportunity in the mental health care field. We've had a lot of growth in the last number of years, but we are to some degree still in infancy, so we can point the direction the right way, rather than trying to chase from behind.

I just wondered about your thoughts on that and the work you're doing that is proving that out, and how you are focusing more on preventative care at the front end, and showing the results that we can have from that. I know you're early in that, but if you could share a little bit of that with us, it would be very appreciated.

[Dr. R. Nicholas Carleton]

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I'm very happy to answer the member's question and to emphatically support his comments. I agree that we need to engage in more preventative medicine, period, and certainly with mental health care I think prevention may very well be the key.

We can do a lot with prevention already in providing additional education. There are already cross-sectional studies, and even some nascent or prospective longitudinal studies that have provided us with some initial directions about what to target, because it's not as simple as identifying a virus or identifying bacteria and then wiping it out. It's more complicated than that with mental health, as I'm sure you know.

With the prospective and longitudinal research that we want to engage in, we want to be able to target specific aspects of individual vulnerabilities and resiliencies. So for example, there's a construct that we refer to as anxiety sensitivity. Anxiety sensitivity refers to how you respond to your own internal sensations associated with anxiety—heart palpitations, for example. How you respond to that can influence your subsequent anxiety responses, so that's one of the variables that we're very interested in researching, because it's also one that we can modify. So if we can broadly proliferate modification of that variable, we can reduce it as a risk factor and then build resiliency right into mental health and mental health care at a very fundamental level.

So variables like those we are very interested in studying, because we know how to change them. We're excited about the prospect that if we can demonstrate the success associated with that change, we can then encourage and support the use of those kinds of changes, not just for first responders but for all Canadian citizens.

[Lawrence Toet, Conservative, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

What about the whole-of-family approach? When I speak of that, I'm talking about the need to include all family members in the process. I think it's actually very beneficial even for younger children—I wouldn't say very young children—to have a better understanding of what's occurring and to be supportive in the family structure.

I just look back to the time at the end of the life of both my mother-in-law and father-in-law. They spent that time at the end with us in our household, and I see the positive impact that actually had on my children, being part of that process, understanding the need for care, and understanding the need for support.

Do you see that whole-of-family approach as something we should be looking at going forward?

[Dr. R. Nicholas Carleton]

Absolutely. Again, I would emphatically support that.

When I'm treating my own patients, one of the important things I speak to is the notion of how it's important to keep your family in the loop, so to speak, to make sure they have access to evidence-based education. There's a lot of misinformation out there, and I believe that misinformation is causing additional problems. For example, people still believe that post-traumatic stress disorder is a lifelong and unresolvable disorder, and that's simply not the case.

So there's a lot of misinformation. The more information we can provide not only to the individual who's having difficulties but also to their family members, the better our chances of supporting them in the long term for ongoing success with any mental health challenge are going to be.

[The Chair, Conservative, Ben Lobb]

Mr. Toet, you have 10 seconds left.

[Lawrence Toet, Conservative, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

I think I'll pass.

[The Chair, Conservative, Ben Lobb]

Okay.

He's too generous.

Ms. Morin, you have five minutes and ten seconds.

[Isabelle Morin, NDP, Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Lachine, QC]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Mr. Beaulieu, you talked a lot about housing, which I found very interesting. Could you tell us more about the importance of housing for someone with mental health problems? You also talked about older people living with those kinds of problems.

Can you tell us about the significance of those problems in terms of age? How does someone with mental health problems benefit from living in an apartment instead of in a centre where all those services are provided?

[Ghislain Beaulieu]

The benefit has to do with the individual's autonomy. By living in an apartment, they learn not to depend on others and to take care of themselves. Rehabilitation begins with having self-esteem, your own things and feeling responsible. When they live in an institution, they have no decisions to make and have no responsibilities. So it becomes difficult to make them fully self-sufficient.

I went through that with my son. Over a seven-year period when everything was going well thanks to medication, he owned a three-apartment building. He took good care of it and functioned quite normally. For people like him, it is really important to have that feeling of belonging and accountability to be able to continue their rehabilitation in the community.

[Isabelle Morin, NDP, Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Lachine, QC]

How many people who live in the housing you provide go on to live somewhere else without any assistance? Approximately how much time do they spend in your housing?

[Ghislain Beaulieu]

I cannot give you an answer yet because the project is in the construction phase. We will provide housing accommodations with minimal monitoring. I know that those who will live there will come from housing provided by an organization, such as Le Pont. That organization has apartments near its offices, and people are monitored around the clock. People will be monitored in the apartments under construction, but more loosely. The monitoring will not be done 24/7; it will be looser. I cannot give you those statistics, but the organizations we work with could.

[Isabelle Morin, NDP, Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Lachine, QC]

Does the approach change depending on whether the individual is a young adult or an older person?

[Ghislain Beaulieu]

Absolutely. In our experience, the earlier a young adult receives treatment, the less damage and consequences they will suffer, and the more possible autonomy and rehabilitation will become. Conversely, an older person may have stopped taking their medication, and their disease may have progressed. It is crucial for a young person to receive the right treatment as early as possible. They must receive strong support and guidance to reduce relapses to a minimum.

[Isabelle Morin, NDP, Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Lachine, QC]

My understanding is that families gave you substantial sums of money to help you establish your foundation. Now, you operate through fundraising. You are lucky to have had access to that money in your community.

What do you think the government's role is? If we wanted to apply your model in other cities, villages or communities in Canada, what kind of a role could the government play to help a similar project see the light of day?

[Ghislain Beaulieu]

I think the government must continue to strongly support the organizations. In our community, for instance, a number of organizations do a tremendous job. I call them “angels” because they work with limited funding, and they do it with a passion we don't really see among major networks and institutions. Those organizations are key partners for success, but they operate with very small budgets and teams.

The government must continue to help them, so that they won't have any operational problems, and so that they can develop projects and innovate in the field to continue improving the environment. The same goes for prevention. If organizations can do their work, they will be able to develop. That is where we, the foundations, come in to support the new developments. If the organizations are having operational problems, our community definitely loses important assets. I think the government's role is to properly support those organizations.

[Isabelle Morin, NDP, Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Lachine, QC]

Great. Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Conservative, Ben Lobb]

That concludes this panel.

I thank both our guests.

We're going to suspend for a minute or two and then go in camera, as we have some committee business to work on.

We'll have to ask our guests at the back to leave, please.

When we come back, we'll be in camera.

[Proceedings continue in camera]