The US Food and Drug Administration recently asked Endo Pharmaceuticals to take their “uncrushable” opioid painkiller, Opana ER, off the market because of public health concerns about the potential for abuse. “FDA requests removal of Opana ER for risks related to abuse” Not only is this the first time the FDA has recalled a drug […]
I participated in a codesign workshop in Toronto yesterday put on by the Evidence Exchange Network, focused on identifying mental healthcare evidence gathering priorities in the province, and I was so impressed to see that the top three priorities selected by the stakeholders attending were: accessibility, effectiveness, and supporting the voices of those with lived experience. […]
A story submitted to the City of Brains Project by a woman in Toronto covers the complex, difficult journey of trying to get access to mental health help for OCD. It’s so frustrating that there are evidence-based treatments, very well-supported by research, but they’re not actually made available to people. As you can see in the story, […]
This project started with a simple question: How do you access mental health services in Toronto? The answers, however, have been anything but simple. Each answer typically comes in the form of a story. And we’re finding that these are stories full of hope, frustration, tragedy, failure, success, challenges, kindness, inequality, complexity, barriers, and perseverance. The […]
When people are struggling the most, they often encounter a part of the healthcare system that can seem like it was designed in the medieval era: emergency room care for people with mental illnesses. As budgets for mental health services get cut year after year, with no preventative care or dedicated psychiatric treatment centers accessible, […]
But you can learn how to swim. When I say that mental illness is like drowning and building better mental health is like learning how to swim, I’m not suggesting that mental illnesses aren’t real biological experiences. Drowning is a very biological experience. If we took some guy that doesn’t know how to swim and […]