FAR and Faces and Voices of Recovery Canada sent a Letter to The Honourable Jane Philpott, Federal Minister of Health, regarding the renegotiation of the Health Accord with the provinces. Addiction and mental health disorders represent about 10% – 11% of the overall burden of disease yet receive only about 7% of the funding under Canadian health care budgets. CAMH has estimated that this represents an annual deficit for Ontario alone of about $1.5 billion. FAR requested that all the proceeds from the sale of cannabis should be used to fund the treatment of addiction and mental health disorders until this underfunding is rectified.
Attached to FAR’s letter is a letter by the son of one of our members to Minister Philpott which illustrates the suffering, devastation and loss of life experienced by our youth with untreated addiction and mental illness, as well as the hope for recovery.
By: A sibling/caregiver/nurse My parents are retired. They worked their whole lives to provide for their children, including drives to Disney Worldat March break in a Ford caravan, summertime camps, and all of the day to day demands of looking after three children......
By: Kat E If you told me 3 years ago that I would be riding the wave of cannabis induced psychosis with my teenage son J, I would look at you with complete bewilderment. Even though I’ve worked in the mental health & addiction field for years, I wasn’t...
My son Nicholas My beautiful boy was perfect in every way but one. His brain was broken. I knew it from day one and I was ready to do anything to help him, anything I could. As it turned out, that was going to be nowhere near enough to save him. A mother’s heart...
By: Joanne Helm On a very cold day this year, I came home from work, sat on my bed with tears in my eyes, and asked God: why me? Believe it or not a voice in my head boomed out: why not you Joanne? Like many of you, I took my child’s mental illness,...
By: A Toronto Mother We started noticing a change in our son at 14. The checkboxes for mental health red flags we are instructed to look for in our children were all there: School refusal? Check. Self-isolation? Check. Excessive sleeping? Check. Decline in...
By: Kathryn Eve When I was a teen, I developed a real problem with alcohol and drugs right out of the gate. My experience with addiction was fast and furious. It quickly went from being fun to just problems. Of course, I didn’t see my substance use that way. I...
Hi! My name is Tyler, and I am in long term recovery from alcoholism and addiction. This is a significantly shortened rendition of this wild ride I like to call life. But before we get into all of that, let’s start at the top. I grew up in two loving households...
Five years ago I decided it was time to find recovery and take my life back. Five years ago today I took what money I had and used it for gas instead of dope like I originally planned to do. I drove 2.5 hours away from where I was quickly dying. It sure wasn’t...
My birth mother was only 16 when she found out she was pregnant so she had me and gave me up for adoption. I was adopted into an Irish Catholic family in Toronto where both my parents were alcoholics. It was an unpredictable, chaotic and dysfunctional home. There was...
I am a mother, daughter, sister, niece, aunt, and a proud living example that recovery from addiction is possible. My name is Tania, and I am grateful to be in recovery from alcoholism. Only 11 short years ago, I was too ill to hold a job, or have any meaningful...