Canadian Mindscape Monitor

Sorry, dear readers, that we’ve been delinquent in our posts. Too much work, too little pay for this blogging (i.e. none!) etc etc… But we do feel it’s important to follow up on an earlier story.  When asked by CMM if he could provide even one scientific reference for his grandiose claims to the media [...]

This is rich. British Columbia’s Minister of Housing and Social Development Rich Coleman told the Victoria Times-Colonist that the government was engaged in a review of the BC Mental Health Act, partly with an eye to begin forcing homeless people into emergency shelters on cold nights. This comment came in the wake of a Vancouver [...]

CMM editor Rob Wipond has just published an article in Focus magazine about the overlapping mental capacity and mental health laws which allow elderly people in British Columbia to easily and quickly be stripped of all their legal rights. Check out “Who Has the Right to Control Your Life?“

The Globe and Mail cites perennial involuntary committal promoter and Schizophrenia Society rep John Gray as saying that 60,000 people are involuntarily treated in Canada each year. It’s a stunning statistic. And you can bet it’s actually much higher if we add in all the “treatment by forcible coercion” numbers, because it’s common practice for [...]

We here at CMM have been worrying that we might one day see striking workers and protesters rounded up, declared mentally ill and forcibly sedated en masse, but it seems that day has already arrived and psychiatrist Dr. Lyle Rossiter has gone much further than our worst nightmares. We thought it was actually a viral [...]

A rare opportunity to hear a good interview with Dr. Thomas Szasz, one of the few high profile psychiatrists who regularly attacks the foundations of psychiatry and the concepts surrounding “mental health” and “mental illness” at his Cybercenter for Liberty and Responsibility…

The sad fact of the matter is, despite all the hullaballoo about mental health issues in the media daily, the recent federal election meant absolutely nothing in terms of the mental health system in Canada. All the major parties essentially had the exact same platform: boost funding to mental health professionals, support rehabilitation programs, and [...]

The recommendations from the inquest into the death of Jeffrey James at Toronto’s Centre for Addiction and Mental Health are being applauded by its own “voice for clients”, the Empowerment Council, in this Globe and Mail article. Certainly, CMM is always encouraged when somebody with the Coroner’s kind of public credibility states the obvious: that [...]

A “call for action” in a letter to all Canada’s federal party leaders today from the National Union of Public and General Employees illustrates the unfortunate lack of insight most members of the public have about our mental health system. NUPGE rightly complains that poverty and lack of community supports have resulted in too many [...]

A Globe and Mail article includes some damning testimony from the public inquest into the death of Jeffrey James at Toronto’s Centre for Addiction and Mental Health. After angering and embarrassing staff by performing a sexual act in front of them, James was left in restraints for FIVE DAYS in Canada’s “premier” psychiatric hospital, and [...]

We’re cautiously hopeful about the trial of a new type of “community court” to help resolve crime issues in Vancouver’s troubled downtown. If it truly works itself into a consensus-based, restorative justice model for people charged with crimes who also have addictions, learning disabilities or psychological difficulties etc, that could be grand. However, CMM is [...]

In another chapter of the disturbing trend of psychiatry pushing into our daily lives, Nova Scotia’s government has started requiring people applying for driver’s licenses to confess whether they’ve ever had a “psychiatric or psychological condition”. (Um, what’s NOT a “psychological condition”, anyway? Last I checked even paying attention to the road was a “psychological [...]