Throwing Away the Baby With the Bath Water

The conditions that patients in our mental health system are being subjected to during the pandemic is well below the radar.  When we are looking at the support network that is in place to help people in need, it is important that we first realize how compromised that support may be and that we consider what can be done to assist in remedying the problem.

Currently at the Grey Nuns hospital, their senior director of Addiction and Mental Health has suspended all visitors to mental health patients on top of the restrictions that have been in place since the pandemic began eight months ago. Some patients have lived with those restrictions almost since the beginning of the pandemic. 

This means that people who are struggling with coping on their own and do not have the support or ability to control their thoughts, are now locked down for months at a time without any enrichment activities, no live group therapy sessions, no social activities, and now no visitors. In essence, most standard therapeutic interventions have been compromised by the COVID protocols in place leaving very little treatment options.

The Grey Nuns COVID response has compromised the care of all its mental health patients. While their protocols are framed as a temporary response to the pandemic, they have been in place for eight months and the province’s infection rate is now at an all-time high. Without compassionate leadership that acknowledges what their front line staff have been saying since the start of the pandemic, this temporary response is in effect permanent, leaving our mental health patients with limited effective critical care in times of crisis. 

The driving force behind this issue is the management team behind these decisions. The front line staff and patient care teams are doing a phenomenal job despite the limitations that these short-sighted restrictions have imposed upon them. Unfortunately patient advocacy systems, such as Patient Relations, are setup to address problems perpetuated by front line staff, not managers. Therefore any complaints into this system about management or care systems, get caught in an endless feedback loop. However, the more people that get involved, a louder voice is created. https://www.alberta.ca/make-a-complaint-to-the-health-advocate-offices.aspx

The big takeaway from this is that many of our most vulnerable citizens have long been ignored and while this pandemic has put extra stress on our social safety nets, it has also identified long standing systemic issues that need addressing. While we continue to provide guidance so people can get the help they need, it is important that we acknowledge that a lot of that help is not as helpful as we think it is or that it should be.

"It is an odd paradox that a society, which can now speak openly and unabashedly about topics that were once unspeakable, still remains largely silent when it comes to mental illness." - Glenn Close (b. 1947)