Global News – Mental Health

Veterans’ families get counselling; better disability payments on hold

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October 1, 2014 – Anna Mehler Paperny and Laura Stone, Global News

The federal government is promising counselling for veterans’ families and smoother transitions between military and civilian life in response to recommendations on how to better serve those who’ve served the country and suffered often crippling disabilities in the process – but says it needs to give more thought to proposals that would improve benefits for those with the worst disabilities and ensure equal treatment for hurt reservists.

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Why make soldiers choose between their pensions and their mental health?

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September 30, 2014 – Anna Mehler Paperny, Global News

For members of Canada’s military, the choice to come forward about mental illness can be agonizing: Anyone deemed “unfit to serve” – due to mental illness, for example, if the Defence Department contends the illness’s roots predate military service – before having completed the minimum 10 years of service loses his or her pension.

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Magnotta trial: Not criminally responsible myths, debunked

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September 30, 2014 – Anna Mehler Paperny, Global News

Luka Magnotta has said he killed and dismembered Chinese student Jun Lin, but is seeking a designation of NCR – not criminally responsible.

If Magnotta is found not criminally responsible it would mean a mental disorder was behind his actions. Instead of going to prison, he would go to a forensic hospital where he’s kept and treated for however long it takes until the illness is abated and he’s no longer a danger to the public (or himself).

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Investigation: Canada’s psychiatric prisons have highest death, assault rates

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Kingston Pen

May 1, 2014 – By  Global News

Offenders are more likely to die or be violently attacked in a psychiatric prison than any other federal institution – by a long shot.

The people in these specialized facilities – in B.C., Saskatchewan, Ontario, Quebec – are the most vulnerable and problematic in a prison system already overflowing with mental illness.

And numbers obtained by Global News through an access to information request indicate they’re disproportionately subject to violence and death in the institutions supposedly designed to care for them best.

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