Medication and mental illness: by the numbers

3.7   People with schizophrenia who do not take their medication as prescribed are 3.7 times more likely to relapse than patients who take their medication.

62   Percentage of Canadians with schizophrenia who feel side effects from medication limit their quality of life.

$1.16 billion      Amount spent on antidepressants in Canada in 2007.

$629 million     Amount spent on antipsychotics in Canada in 2007.

$247 million      Amount spent on antianxiety medications in Canada in 2007.

190,000     Discharges from Canadian hospitals in 2002 and 2003 attributed to mental illness.

Sources: Psychiatric Times, Psychiatric Services, American Journal of Psychiatry and Mood Disorders Society of Canada

lets add a few more …

$51 billion – published estimated annual cost to Canadian economy of current system – and for that we get the wonderful kind of results reported in The Star  last week.

three – people experiencing emotional/ psychological/ psychiatric  distress who were shot by Toronto Police Service in one year .

From Western Lapland, Finland 

• zero – number of times healthcare team find it necessary to give a diagnosis of schizophrenia
• almost none – hospitalisations – they don’t even have a ward.
• almost none – number of people prescribed antipsychotic medications
• 80% – percentage of people who recover from serious mental illness who recover fully or enough to resume life…

….indeed people who’ve been through this programme don’t just get back to where they were, but stronger: People who’ve been through the Open Dialogue Program enjoy better mental health and resilience than the general population .

Now Finns love hockey as much as Canadians and likely spend more time in the dark –

If it works in Finland why not here?

Eh? Canada……

Related articles

• Mental illness: Medication alone isn’t the answer (recoverynetworktoronto.wordpress.com)
• Mental Health: The road to diagnosis is filled with twists and turns (recoverynetworktoronto.wordpress.com)
• “Antipsychotics made me want to kill myself” (recoverynetworktoronto.wordpress.com)
• mental health monster https://recoverynetworktoronto.wordpress.com/2012/05/21/mental-health-monster/
• psych drugs not the best option for people at rsk of psychosis https://recoverynetworktoronto.wordpress.com/2012/04/16/psych-drugs-not-the-best-option-for-people-at-risk-of-psychosis/