Thank you for the post.

Peace

Have we no emergency funding for mental health support? This is an emergency!

have zero mental health services. I lived in a remote community for many years and had a bout of post partum anxiety. I was referred to 'counselling'. It was a joke - essentially it was a nurse who 'took a course' on counselling. Not a psychologist or psychiatrist. She was a nice person who wanted to help but really was in over her head.My guidance counselor in high school had more training.

I didn't know how bad it was until years later when I lived in a major urban center I saw a psychiatrist for unrelated anxiety due to a divorce, and then spoke to a child psychologist (my child had issues due to the divorce, but it was more family counselling) and wow, what a difference.

We need more mental health professionals - meaning HIGHLY QUALIFIED professionals...not just medical people who 'take courses'...and they need to send them ASAP. I cannot tell you how much help I received from the right people and what a difference it made in only a few sessions. I could've seen the other unqualified person for years and not made as much progress.

When my first daughter was in the NICU at BC Children's, I was amazed by the amount of families from places like Prince George or the Okanagan. I didn't realize that the at the time only level III NICU was in Vancouver (there's another now but it's in Surrey, which is also in the Vancouver area).

I asked one of the neonatology fellows why we weren't building children's hospitals or at least making sure there were high risk obstetricians, perinatologists, and level III NICUs in other parts of BC. The answer? "No one would want to go there. Everyone wants to be in the city where all the research is.".

Well, shit. If you can get doctors to go to Nowheresville, Kansas....why the hell can't we get doctors to not actually remote places like Kelowna? Or to our actually remote places? What are we saying about our health professionals if we admit they won't go???

there should be some kind of requirement for specialists to have to service remote areas for a certain amount of time. I think our government sometimes is too 'hands off' when it comes to where doctors should go. I know one area I lived in, a bunch of doctors were always busy trying to recruit other doctors from their own country, because there were none here in Canada that wanted to practice there. The entire town was staffed with doctors from the one country. There even were a few specialists. I do remember thinking...why are no doctors educated in Canada wanting to work up here?