These are the children who overburden teachers and cause chaos in the classroom. They stress their parents to the breaking point, and contribute disproportionately to the violence in our communities. Children's Mental Health Services Produce Results Province-wide, more than 100,000 children participate in programs in children's mental health centres each year and many of them have urgent and serious problems. We know that treatment programs work. According to parents, teachers and the youth themselves, their problems are reduced substantially with the services they receive in children's mental health centres.
Research supports our statistics.
A recent analysis of 150 outcome studies confirmed the significant and positive results of mental health treatment with children and adolescents. The cost of providing treatment to children in 97 mental health centres across the entire province is less than the cost of running one urban teaching hospital. A range of services is provided, including residential, day treatment, outpatient and prevention. Family breakdown, school failure and criminal behaviour are linked to unresolved mental health problems and traumatic events in childhood. In the face of funding cuts, ministries are focusing their energies on their priorities, and not one ministry or department in the entire government claims children's mental health as its priority.