Mr. Speaker, Canada's national Mental Health Week, May 3 to 9, helps raise awareness of a very critical personal and public health issue, and informs Canadians of the urgent reality of mental illness in our country.
Too few Canadians are aware of the startling high occurrence of mental illness. One in five Canadians will experience a mental illness in their lifetime and about one million people in Canada currently live with a severe or persistent form of mental illness.
People living with mental illness are often much more severely affected by social and economic inequality. Canadians suffering from mental illness are dramatically more at risk of marginalization, lengthy unemployment, isolation, poor health, a life of poverty and sometimes imprisonment.
I ask my colleagues in the House to join me in recognizing Mental Health Week and to encourage more Canadians to do all that they can to assist in developing ways to diagnose, treat and compassionately care for those of us suffering from mental illness.