A committee tasked with reviewing mental health and substance use in the province has released recommendations for next steps.<\/p>\n
The committee is made up of all parties in the province, with MHAs from districts on the island and in Labrador.<\/p>\n
Among the recommendations, the committee suggests the government should improve access to harm reduction services, add more community support to the system and create more education and awareness.<\/p>\n
However, Health Minister Krista Lynn Howell says near the top of the list is access to mental health services.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe issue that we heard the most about was access to long-term, short-term (programs and services),\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve done some work to move the dial on that, but I do know that there are still a lot of challenges for people who have these mental health and addictions issues.\u201d<\/p>\n
The recommendations include:<\/p>\n
\u2013 Addressing the social determinants of health (e.g., housing, poverty)<\/p>\n
\u2013 Focus on children, youth and families<\/p>\n
\u2013 Focus on Indigenous People and communities<\/p>\n
\u2013 Improve education and awareness<\/p>\n
\u2013 Enhance navigation support<\/p>\n
\u2013 Reduce wait times and improve access to treatment programs and services<\/p>\n
\u2013 Increase access to harm reduction<\/p>\n
\u2013 Ensure consistent delivery of high-quality programs<\/p>\n
\u2013 Increase community collaboration and investment<\/p>\n
\u2013 Improve data collection and evaluation practices<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A committee tasked with reviewing mental health and substance use in the province has released recommendations for next…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":34207,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[49,48,84,393,394],"class_list":{"0":"post-34206","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mental-health","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-health","11":"tag-mental-health","12":"tag-mentalhealth"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34206","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34206"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34206\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/34207"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34206"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34206"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34206"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}