From the Editor

“There’s one fact on which we all agree: people are suffering. People with mental illnesses, their families and friends, and society at large are all touched by a set of disorders that affect one in five people globally. What is also evident – to every worried parent or partner, to every citizen strolling down a busy downtown street, to every guard working in a prison, to every teacher spending the majority of children’s weekday waking hours with them – is that the status quo is unacceptable.”

Dr. David Goldbloom (of the University of Toronto), who serves as the Senior Medical Advisor at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, makes these comments in his new book.

Can we do better? Those with mental health problems wait for almost all care, and the quality of care is uneven. This week’s Reading is an excerpt from Dr. Goldbloom’s new book, We Can Do Better: Urgent Innovations to Improve Mental Health Access and Care. The excerpt, like the book itself, strikes an optimistic note, observing the incredible innovation already present in mental health care.

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A special word of thanks to Catherine Whiteside of Simon & Schuster Canada for making this Reading possible.

DG

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