The series on mental health and our children continues with this look at the impact of mental illness on our health care system - and how we can help our children stay healthy.
By Valerie Berenyi
We’ve all heard about the mind/body connection.
Psychiatrist Dr. Chris Wilkes likes to put a finer point on it.
“There is no health without mental health,” Wilkes says, explaining that it is profoundly connected to our physical health and overall well-being.
He’s got the numbers to prove that poor mental health equals poor physical health — and therefore a huge cost to our health-care system.
Wilkes and a group of other Calgary researchers recently published a paper in the Canadian Journal of Psychiatry that found Calgarians living with a psychiatric diagnosis cost Alberta’s health-care system three times more for physical (non-psychiatric) health care than those without a diagnosis.
A year ago, the same journal published a study reporting that a person with a mental health diagnosis had a 70 per cent increase in mortality.
“And it wasn’t through suicide; it was through things like diabetes, cancer, heart disease,” says Wilkes.
“There is a health care problem associated with mental health diagnoses.”
Indeed, mental illness costs the Canadian economy an estimated $51 billion annually in terms of health care and lost productivity, according to 2003 figures from Statistics Canada. It’s the No. 1 cause of disability in Canada, with 500,000 Canadians absent from work every day due to psychiatric problems.
Read more: http://www.calgaryherald.com/health/build+mental+health+wellness+children/5523755/story.html#ixzz1aQLNfHcI
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