The Saskatchewan government released a new strategy this morning aimed at helping people who struggle with mental health and addictions issues.
The action plan sets various goals to address current gaps including reducing wait times to access services, lessening the public stigma around mental health and providing more training for family physicians in this area.
The plan also contains strategies that target Aboriginal and northern Saskatchewan communities.
Dr. Fern Stockdale Winder, the author of the action plan, says they visited several Indigenous communities for feedback and were told services need to be provided in partnership with Aboriginal stakeholders and contain a cultural component.
“What we heard from that was a really strong need to be responsive, to be culturally responsive, and to make sure that services were welcoming and inviting for people who were from First Nation background,” she says.
She also says over the course of their research, adequate access to services continued to come up as a big issue in northern Saskatchewan communities.
Saskatchewan Mental Health Association Executive Director Dave Nelson says the action plan is a good start but there is still a long way to go.
“One of the things about Saskatchewan is we’re dead last when you measure the amounts that, at least in the health budget, goes to mental health,” he says. “Compared to the overall budget, we put in about five per cent in a year and the average across the provinces is seven per cent and the target that they’re now talking in the academic world that it should be is nine per cent.”
The action plan will be rolled out over 10 years and include the involvement of a number of government departments such as social services, education, justice, corrections and policing.
It was announced Monday morning in Regina.