I'm recovered, not cured. I lead a full, productive life. I have a good job, with responsibility. I have friends and family who care about me. I have hopes and aspirations that I work towards. Recovery from mental illness is exactly the same—it's expected.
We know that poverty compromises the ability of Canadians to be well and to recover. Poverty exacerbates the symptoms of mental illness and can bring them out. At the same time, mental illness can sometimes make it difficult to sustain employment and therefore leads to poverty. It's a vicious cycle.
When we think about recovery from mental illness, that means taking a long-term view and making meaningful investments in programs that extend well beyond the health care sector, such as programs that support people living with serious mental illness to get and keep meaningful employment.
So what happens to those 500,000 people I talked about earlier?
We know that some of them will recover quickly and return to work, but we know that a large percentage of those with serious mental illness will not. Someone off work on illness leave for six months only has a 50/50 chance of returning to employment. After a year away, the chance of returning drops to 10%, and for that reason 90% of the Canadians who are experiencing a severe or serious mental illness are unemployed. That accounts for about 3% of the Canadian population.
People with mental illness are capable of contributing tremendously to society, yet a troublingly high proportion of those who are homeless suffer from mental illness. We need to improve policy that rewards and supports people who return to work, rather than penalizing or failing to incentivize earned income.
At the commission, we call that population “the aspiring workforce”. They are those who have left work because of mental health problems or those who have never entered the workforce because their mental health problems struck early in life.
It's interesting that there are many organizations that work with those individuals to help them—help them build resumés, help them gain skills, help them get training—but it's very hard to find organizations working with employers to make the workplace culture, policies, and practices more accommodating and more accessible to people experiencing mental illness and mental health problems.
The commission has done a pre-budget submission this year for a demonstration project as an example to support employers—hopefully to support 200 employers across the country—to learn what works and what doesn't, to determine the best practices for changing the culture of workplaces, changing the policies and practices in order to keep those with mental illness in the workplace, have them return to work as early as possible, and help those who have never entered the workforce be able to find meaningful work and jobs.
Taking it one step further, we should make a concerted effort to advance the research that informs our knowledge and understanding of the social determinants of health and the links between mental health and overall health. Collectively, we must work harder to provide services that address the social determinants of health. If the mental health system does not take into account social inequity and poverty, then the time and energy that we're spending will be wasted and the results diminished.
Efforts to address the social determinants of health must be collaborative and involve different systems, including all levels of government, ministries, and sectors, and must involve those with lived experience of mental illness. These efforts must apply a health equity lens, be evidence-informed, and focus on upstream initiatives as well as downstream services and supports for people living with mental illness.
I'd like to thank the committee for giving me the opportunity to be here today. Thank you.