Vancouver, San Francisco, and International Mental Health

Tomorrow morning I will board an airplane bound for Vancouver. After a weekend of spending time with good friends and reacquainting myself with the west coast, I will attend events related to the International Initiative for Mental Health Leadership.

My leadership exchange is in Vancouver,
then I'm off to San Francisco for the main
gathering (source: http://www.iimhl.com)

Roughly every 16-18 months, the IIMHL gathers people from its member nations in the English-speaking world (England, Scotland, Ireland, the US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand) to attend a network meeting and leadership exchanges to focus on the various issues facing people who work in mental health, and the consumer/survivors they support. Since 2007 I have acted as Poet Laureate for the organization. In that capacity I participated in previous gatherings in Ottawa (August 2007), Brisbane (March 2009) and Killarney (May 2010). 

I have been invited to participate in a leadership exchange focused on homelessness in mental health in Vancouver next Monday and Tuesday before proceeding to the network meeting Wednesday through Friday in San Francisco. I consider this my most important ongoing poetry-related engagement, where my poems are used as part of the final record of proceedings, and participants share my words within their organizations and their mental health systems.

Source: MHCC Website

When I move from meeting to meeting in Vancouver next week, I will be talking with participants, researchers and advocates involved with the Mental Health Commission of Canada's At Home project. This project is gathering empirical evidence of the impact housing-first care has for people dealing with the double negative of no street address and no access to mental health and addiction services. The project is operating in five Canadian cities, and Vancouver is the western city in the study.

A man sleeps on a Vancouver street
as a passerby looks on

I'm constantly amazed at the number of homeless people on our main streets in Canada. I've lived in Toronto, Kingston, Montreal and Ottawa, and have also travelled to many other midsize and large cities across the country. We have a serious problem on our hands, and it's compounded by the fact that the majority of homeless people concurrently deal with mental health issues. If we're ever going to get a grip on this problem we need to use different, innovative solutions to get things on a path to mitigation and eventual resolution. I'm hopeful this project will produce some positive results and inform new approaches that get people into a safer environment to receive the services they require.

IIMHL delegates in Killarney, Ireland
(source: Martin Brogan)

In the meantime, I have to get myself packed and ready to get on a airplane to stay with friends or in a hotel and be fed well as we face this issue and so many more at the IIMHL events. Understanding my own privilege in all this is a big part of the ongoing struggle. 

But I try my best. And we as a nation must try harder and learn from our international partners about what works elsewhere. People living with mental health concerns in Canada deserve nothing less.