From the Editor
“Mental health is out of the closet. Now that we’ve opened the door, time for a closer look at what’s been out of sight for so long.”
This week, we consider three selections. They appeared in newspapers in recent days, and discuss mental health topics. The opening quotation – which is from the first essay – applies to all of them; a closer look: calls for more debate about how mental health services are organized, the care that patients are offered, and the way mental illness is portrayed in our culture.
In our first selection, we consider an op ed from Toronto Star columnist Martin Regg Cohn. He wonders about improving access to mental health care. In a provocative essay, he mulls the mismatch between the supply and demand of services (particularly psychiatric services). He argues: “We might as well accept that our mental health spending will increase significantly over the years. All the more reason to start reallocating funds wisely now.”
Three Selections, Three Newspapers
In the second selection, we look at an essay by Dr. Mariam Alexander, an NHS psychiatrist, who discusses ECT. She opens simply: “It might come as quite a surprise to learn that, as a psychiatrist, if I ever had the misfortune to develop severe depression, my treatment of choice would be electroconvulsive therapy (ECT).”
And in our third selection, the University of Toronto’s Dr. Mark Sinyor considers the popular show “13 Reasons Why” and offers a cautionary note about the portrayal of suicide. The LA Times op ed notes that Netflix and others have “the potential to do good in the world when handling sensitive mental health issues.”
Enjoy.
DG
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