Health Watch - March, 2016

Inuit healing centre slated to close

 Lack of funding will force the closure in March of Mamisarvik Healing Centre, one of only two Inuit-specific treatment centres in the country. The centre, located in Ottawa’s east end, has treated 723 people since opening in 2003 and is said to have been instrumental in preventing dozens of suicides.

Jason Leblanc, executive director of Tungasuvvingat Inuit, the not-for-profit organization operating the centre, said the program is consistent with the federal government’s call for healing and support for families in light of the upcoming inquiry into murdered and missing Indigenous women. The residential program, which offers services in English and Inuktitut, opened with funding from the Aboriginal Health Foundation, but when the Harper government closed AHF in 2013, Tungasuvvingat was left to fend for itself.

It can no longer operate without stable funding, said Leblanc. Ottawa has a population of about 3,000 Inuit, which makes it bigger than most Inuit communities in the North. It is considered a “gateway” city for travel to and from the north for health care and education. It is also home to a growing urban Inuit community; many of whom have lived in Ottawa their entire lives.

PTSD prevalent in Indigenous youth leaving home

As the inquest into the deaths of seven Indigenous youth in Thunder Bay continues, more disturbing information is being revealed. According to Mae Katt, a nurse at Dennis Franklin Cromarty First Nations High School, many First Nation†teenagers who leave home to attend high school in the city are suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder.

She said students, in the recent past, have shown more acute conditions of mental health and substance use. The students exhibit symptoms of PTSD, including excessive worry, sleeplessness, headaches and “early psychosis” such as “auditory hallucinations — hearing voices,” said Katt, who attributes the mental illness to “25 years of a suicide crisis that never got addressed” in northern Ontario’s First Nations.

The current generation of students is the first to be raised in the “sub-culture of suicide,” where their parents use drugs to cope with unresolved trauma, grief and loss, she said. Katt said students talk about feeling “devalued” in Thunder Bay, adding†that the “devaluing is related to their race” in a city where “no one really knows who they are.”

Six of the youth that died in the 11-year period from 2000-2011 attended Dennis Franklin Cromarty First Nations High School.

FNHA needs to improve

A recent report from the Office of the Auditor General affirms several positive elements of the work undertaken by the First Nations Heath Authority and the establishment of the First Nations health governance structure in B.C., but also points out that FNHA fell short on some aspects of accountability and governance framework.

The report concluded, “Although the Authority had policies in place to guide its operations, there were some weaknesses in the Authority’s policies that we examined, and a lack of guidance surrounding how they were to be implemented. We also concluded that the Authority was not fully complying with some of its existing policies. As the Authority shifts from a period of transition to the delivery of programs and services, its success will depend on its ability to demonstrate that it has the accountability and governance framework in place and on its compliance with its policies.”

However, the OAG did highlight that FNHA, along with Health Canada and the province, are on the right path to achieving the goals set out in the guiding documents, and that the work underway is addressing challenges related to systemic obstacles to service delivery for First Nations communities in B.C.

FNHA assumed the programs, services, and responsibilities formerly handled by Health Canada’s First Nations Inuit Health Branch – Pacific Region in 2013.

Study shows Inuit have highest lung cancer rate in world

Nunavut-led surveys indicate that eight in 10 of the territory’s mostly Inuit population smokes – a rate five times higher than in the general Canadian population. “Smoking provides huge challenges to our health system, and it has huge societal impacts,” said Natan Obed, president of Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami. A new study published in the International Journal of Circumpolar Health tracked rates of various cancers among different ethnic populations around the Arctic. Co-authored by Kue Young, dean of the University of Alberta’s public health department, it found cancers that once were rarely seen in the far north, including breast and colorectal, are an increasing concern generally. Most notable is the rising rate of lung cancer among the 165,000 Inuit of Canada, the United States and Denmark. Territorial governments are spending millions in an array of anti-smoking programs, some of them stressing that smoking is not a traditional part of Inuit culture – a message underscored in Nunavut by the tagline “Tobacco has no place here.” But life is harsh, said Obed, and having to worry about food scarcity, poverty, and mental health, means smoking is not a primary concern.