Stigma attached to mental illness a "national embarrassment": CMA
By Patrick Sullivan
The stigma attached to mental illness is so pervasive it can affect almost all aspects of Canadians' lives, from the people they marry to the workers they hire, a new poll conducted for the CMA indicates.
"The results don't paint a very flattering picture," CMA President Brian Day said of poll, which was part of the CMA's 2008 National Report Card on the state of Canada's health care system. "When only 50% of us would tell a friend that a family member has a mental illness while 72% would disclose a cancer diagnosis, there's something seriously wrong.
"We are looking at the final frontier of socially acceptable discrimination," he added. "It's a national embarrassment."
The mental health results, from an Ipsos Reid online survey of 2,024 Canadian adults, have a margin of error of ± 2.2%. The survey was conducted prior to the CMA's Aug. 18-20 annual meeting in Montreal, where mental health issues took centre stage. Other findings included:
- almost half of Canadians (46%) think the term "mental illness" is used as an excuse for bad behaviour;
- a solid majority of Canadians would not have a family doctor (61%) or hire a lawyer (58%) who has a mental illness;
- 55% would not marry someone who has a mental illness;
-27% of respondents are fearful of being around people experiencing serious mental illness;
-15% of respondents had themselves received a previous diagnosis of clinical depression, the most common mental illness.
Despite their generally negative attitudes, almost three-quarters of respondents (72%) agreed that funding to treat mental illness should be on a par with funding for physical illnesses such as cancer. The Ipsos Reid overview of the results (
www.cma.ca) concluded: "In the view of most Canadians, mental health is not given the priority it ought to have within the health care system."
The report card also tackled the issue of general access to health care, as it has every year since 2001, and found a slight improvement: 66% of respondents gave the system a rating of A or B, compared with 62% last year.
When it comes to government performance, the provinces enjoyed a better result than their federal counterpart. They received an A or B grade from 40% of respondents, up from 35% last year. The federal government score of 34% was 1% higher than in 2007. Respondents with a family physician were much more likely to give an A grade (26%) than those without one (9%).
The results concerning access were compiled from a telephone survey of 1,002 Canadian adults, and have a margin of error of ± 3.2%.