Health committee  I'll start. I don't know of any specific study looking at the north and lack of access to drugs. Certainly there are a lack of resources in the north. That doesn't include medications only, but also lack of psychological services. It includes lack of health care teams in the comm

Health committee  That is a long discussion, but I'll try to summarize it as best I can. First of all, all medications have side effects. If you read in the CPS, or the Compendium of Pharmaceuticals, about the side effects for Aspirin, you'd probably be amazed at some of the side effects that are

Health committee  Fair enough. All medications are going to have side effects. It's long been known that for people with depression, as they start to get better, very often one of the last things to improve is their subjective mood. There's another dangerous time you didn't mention, and that'

Health committee  So you're right, it's imperative that there is close monitoring of patients. The way that's done is by asking patients how they're feeling and what is going on, and monitoring their symptoms. Some will use rating scales to help monitor those risks. But it really does require regu

Health committee  In general, I would have to disagree with you. I would say that most family doctors are very good in speaking to their patients, discussing side effects of medications, and explaining risks and what we really should be monitoring for. There are certainly tragic anecdotal cases w

Health committee  I guess it would be providing the right treatment for the right patient at the right time.

Health committee  Start by looking at the problems. Are we providing adequate services? Also, I think looking at new innovations is extremely important, as is monitoring systems to make sure those innovations are working, as well as providing adequate funding to make sure we can do those jobs righ

Health committee  For psychology, psychiatry, and mental health teams, the whole gamut. It's all important and we all work together.

Health committee  We need more timely access to health care, no question.

Health committee  At present, medical marijuana is not indicated for any specific psychiatric illness. For PTSD, the standard treatment is usually specific serotonin reuptake inhibitors and psychological and social therapies. All I can say is that it's not indicated at the present time.

Health committee  All I can say is that there's no medical indication for that.

Health committee  You know, I think it bears study. There are difficulties with doing those studies in terms of making sure that the product is uniform throughout the study and that the methods of implementation of it are uniform, but it would have to be done under very controlled circumstances an

Health committee  Yes, it's about 80%. There are many illnesses that are associated with suicide. For example, it's estimated that about 50% of people with schizophrenia will attempt suicide at some point in their life, and 10% will actually succeed and eventually die by suicide. So the numbers a

Health committee  You're absolutely right.

Health committee  There are different rates of suicide, depending on psychiatric diagnoses. So, if we look at the totality of people who have committed suicide, it's estimated that about 90% of those will have suffered from a mental illness.