Canada’s Health Minister urgently needs an education in harm reduction. Announcing his intention to shut down Insite, the supervised injection facility serving drug addicts in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside, Tony Clement told the House of Commons health committee that “supervised injection is not medicine; it does not heal the person addicted to drugs.” Mr. Clement got […]
To Help Or At Least Do No Harm Read More »
A Statistics Canada study on job stress, reported last week in the journal Canadian Social Trends, ought to rivet the attention of Canadian economic and political leaders.Work-related stress takes a high toll on the emotional well-being of millions of employees, undermines the health of many and incurs a forbidding financial penalty. Stress-induced absences have been
Prescription For Stress – Take Time to Smell the Dollars Read More »
Autism is increasing at an alarming rate, according to Autism Society Canada, and may have doubled in the past decade. About 105,000 Canadians have an autistic or other developmental disorder, and 3,000 new cases were diagnosed in Canada in 2002. Statistics from school boards in Saskatchewan, British Columbia and Quebec show an average increase in
Autism Is The Child Of Social Disconnection Read More »
Now that the winds of acrimony blowing from Ottawa have abated, we can reflect upon the differing emotional displays of our political leaders. They have much to teach us about how dysfunctional anger may afflict our personal lives. We saw, on the one hand, the quietly poisonous anger of Stephen Harper. Even before Belinda Stronach’s
Are You Too Liberal Or Conservative With Your Anger? Read More »
Addictions always originate in unhappiness, even if hidden. They are emotional anesthetics; they numb pain. The first question — always — is not “Why the addiction?” but “Why the pain?” The answer, ever the same, is scrawled with crude eloquence on the wall of my patient Anna’s room at the Portland Hotel in the heart
Embraced By The Needle Read More »
Nine-year-old Naomi stood in front of the mirror, an expression of rage on her face, her left hand pulling at her hair while with her right she wielded the scissors. Shiny black locks fell to the floor. When her mother, shocked at this act of self-mutilation, tried to intervene, the child pointed the scissors at
In Treating Depression, Drugs Are Not Enough Read More »
The report of a Port Hardy teacher taping a seven-year-old hyperactive boy’s head to his desk ought to ring alarm bells about the ill-preparedness of our educational system to cope with the increasing number of children struggling with attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder and other neuropsychological problems. This particular teacher’s response may not be typical either of
How Not To Deal With Hyperactivity Read More »
Expressions of near-religious awe and prophesies of dramatic medical advances greeted last week’s announcement that scientists are close to deciphering the human genome, the genetic blueprint for the human body. “Today we are learning the language in which God created life,” President Bill Clinton said at the White House ceremony marking the truce between two
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Gordon Campbell’s drunken driving arrest is more than a painful episode in the life of an individual and more than a “severe misjudgment,” as the B.C. premier’s said, in the career of a politician. It highlights the dysfunction that characterizes the lives of many adults whose childhoods were blighted by the alcoholism of their parents.
On [BC Premier] Gordon Campbell’s Drunk Driving Arrest Read More »
The trial of two British Columbia teenagers, awaiting judgment, has again highlighted the problem of school bullying. The girls were charged with uttering threats in the wake of the suicide of 14-year-old Dawn-Marie Wesley. In November, 2000, Dawn-Marie killed herself shortly after she was accused of spreading false rumours. She was allegedly threatened with a
There Is A Cure For Bullying Read More »
