Mental Health Workers to be Sent to Attawapiskat

Vincent J. Curtis

3 May 2016

The Canadian Press issued a news story that announced that two more mental health workers were going to be sent to Attawapiskat to help deal with the suicide crisis in that community.

Putting a couple more mental health workers into Attawapiskat in order to deal with the suicide crisis in that aboriginal community is another waste of money.  The problem in Attawapiskat is not a crisis in mental health, it is a moral crisis.  (As outlined in a previous posting)

You can’t solve a moral crisis with trips to the shrink.

The strongest tool in the mental crisis workbox is psychotropic drugs.  Tranquilizers and other mental pain killers are the strongest, temporary solution to mental crises.  I’ll bet good money that many of the people in Attawapiskat are already self-medicating, and the suicide crisis broke out because the supply of drugs was cut off.

At best, the mental health workers can treat the symptoms of mental health problems with legally prescribed psychotropic drugs.  But when the cause of the crisis is moral, not biological, drugs can only mask the problem for as long as they are effective.

The crisis in Attawapiskat is moral, not mental.  What Attawapiskat needs is spiritual health workers, not mental health workers, and drugs.

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