Province using previous mental health reports to improve services

Officials say they are working on a five-year plan towards mental health and recovery, saying Manitobans will see the effects of it starting this year.

The province's Mental Health, Wellness and Recovery department says they are working on an action plan to help Manitobans access mental health services that are needed in a timely matter.

In a Monday morning conference, Nancy Heinrichs, executive director of NorWest Coop Community Health, joined Minister Audrey Gordon saying they have seen a massive increase in counselling requests over the past year.

"We have experienced a 500 per cent increase in requests for mental health counselling from January 2020 to March of 2021. The main presenting problem people are presenting walking through our door, or recently onto or screen, has been around anxiety and depression," Heinrichs says. "I have never seen a time where mental health is more important than now."

In response to this and numerous studies done in the past, Gordon says they will be using these, improving mental health supports.

"A lot of work and reports have been commissioned in the past several years," Gordon says. "Now it is time to bring this work together under one umbrella," Gordon says.

Improving services, access and coordination, addressing substance use and recovery, ensuring services are evidence-based quality and data riven, improving population health and wellness, enhancing governance and accountability are the five goals the Mental Health, Wellness and Recovery department says they are working towards.

The province will be using previous reports and look at mental health care in places across the world to do make the changes. Fall consultations with stakeholders to form the five-year plan, set to have a consultant leading this by mid-August. Officials say they will be working with other departments, which includes deputy minister meetings, across the government on programs. Approximate 30 programs and services from other departments will be moved to Mental Health and Recovery.

Officials could not say what kind of programs this will unveil but did say it will take the events of the pandemic as well as Indigenous programming needs into consideration while they create this plan. They say they have recently given $50 million in funding 33 programs to provide mental health supports, with many of which being free.