Heartbreaking stories lead Ontario MPPs to recommend umbrella body to design new system to deal with mental health and addiction.
You can view this story at: http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/article/853137--coyle-mental-health-crisis-has-arrived-say-mpps
At the council meeting last Monday night, residents from Lincoln Road were congratulated for their tenacious opposition to the Erie-St. Clair clinic. Have we forgotten when other "upstanding citizens" from an era gone by lamented falling property values and increased crime that would
certainly follow once "the blacks" were permitted to infiltrate their "nice" neighbourhoods?
How about more recent protests against the "imminent threat" posed by Muslims, newcomers or people infected with HIV?
Always the same patronizing refrain -- "those people" are just not appropriate for our area and should be made to go somewhere else.
Only empirical data can determine whether service volumes at this clinic exceed capacities tolerated in other residential areas.
Objection supported by this information provides reasonable grounds for officials to act.
Instead, council proceeded based upon objection that unabashedly focused on service specialization.
Addiction to alcohol and other drugs is a clearly defined disability under the Ontario Human Rights Code. In 2009, a court ruling cautioned, "The Human Rights Code does not permit us to choose between the disabilities we like and those we do not."
Bigotry and intolerance will persist in our city with "moveable targets" including race, religion, sexual orientation and now, on Lincoln Road, disability.
We cannot afford to stand by and watch this happen, telling ourselves, it's not my fight.
No one is safe when municipal leaders use discrimination to inform their decision-making.
Council members that supported the resolution violated their "oath of office" and breached the trust of constituents with the disability of addiction.
How frightening it feels to live in Windsor today, where elected officials can pick and choose whose human rights will be violated under the guise of our common good.
Deborah Gatenby,
Windsor
By Dr. Tony Hammer, The Windsor StarApril 17, 2010
Nycole Colley has a heated exchange with Dr. Robert McKay, left, and Dr. Tony Hammer during a meeting to discuss the new methadone clinic at 1574 Lincoln Rd. Photograph by: Dan Janisse, Windsor Star Files, The Windsor Star Re: Pressure to move mounts on Windsor methadone clinic, April 7. Recent events have demonstrated exactly how controversial the subject of addiction treatment is. If one in 10 of us suffers from addiction, why is it so difficult to find a suitable place to obtain treatment? The not-in-my-backyard syndrome stance of our neighbours on Lincoln Road is understandable but, so far, the policies of the provincial health care system and the municipal authorities have not helped. The need for addiction clinics is not disputed. In August of last year, we witnessed how the Ontario Addictions Treatment Centre simply arrived on University Avenue without any consultation or planning. The city and local residents expressed indignation but were then obliged to accept a fait accompli. When Dr. McKay and I recognized that our practice at the Drouillard Road Clinic would need to move because of lack of space, we set out to find a location that would avoid these inevitable concerns, even if greatly exaggerated, that we anticipated would arise among our neighbours. In an effort to avoid this, we had two encounters with the city administration, both of which resulted in rejection on the grounds of refusal to change a zoning and insistence on putting a suitable building on the open market. Addictionology is not a particularly fashionable branch of medicine but it can be most rewarding. I note that despite repeated requests, medical schools, particularly the University of Western Ontario, decline to teach the subject to medical students and residents. I am hard-pressed to think of the teaching of any other branch of medicine that such a high proportion of the community suffers from is so systematically neglected. Moreover, we who provide treatment for addiction, marvel at how some of our colleagues in other specialities are provided free access to such lavish facilities by the health care system. But one example is hospitals and fracture clinics for orthopedic surgeons. Why can't such things be done for addiction services? Recent events demonstrate that the choice of a suitable location to treat addicts requires the co-operation between the Ministry of Health and Long-Term Health and the local municipality, in this case the Windsor city council. Unless they step up to the challenge, addiction treatment services will remain unplanned and inefficient. Those who suffer from addiction and the doctors who treat them have at least as much right to feel angry as the residents of Lincoln Road. As a physician, I would very much like to be part of the solution here but we will need assistance. I look forward to cooperating with local and provincial government setting up a community resource in a suitable location and this may well be an ideal opportunity to create a hub for treatment resources that is linked to complementary services. I believe my patients deserve this. DR. TONY HAMMER, Windsor © Copyright (c) The Windsor Star
Re: Pressure to move mounts on Windsor methadone clinic, April 7.
Recent events have demonstrated exactly how controversial the subject of addiction treatment is. If one in 10 of us suffers from addiction, why is it so difficult to find a suitable place to obtain treatment?
The not-in-my-backyard syndrome stance of our neighbours on Lincoln Road is understandable but, so far, the policies of the provincial health care system and the municipal authorities have not helped.
The need for addiction clinics is not disputed. In August of last year, we witnessed how the Ontario Addictions Treatment Centre simply arrived on University Avenue without any consultation or planning. The city and local residents expressed indignation but were then obliged to accept a fait accompli.
When Dr. McKay and I recognized that our practice at the Drouillard Road Clinic would need to move because of lack of space, we set out to find a location that would avoid these inevitable concerns, even if greatly exaggerated, that we anticipated would arise among our neighbours.
In an effort to avoid this, we had two encounters with the city administration, both of which resulted in rejection on the grounds of refusal to change a zoning and insistence on putting a suitable building on the open market.
Addictionology is not a particularly fashionable branch of medicine but it can be most rewarding. I note that despite repeated requests, medical schools, particularly the University of Western Ontario, decline to teach the subject to medical students and residents.
I am hard-pressed to think of the teaching of any other branch of medicine that such a high proportion of the community suffers from is so systematically neglected.
Moreover, we who provide treatment for addiction, marvel at how some of our colleagues in other specialities are provided free access to such lavish facilities by the health care system. But one example is hospitals and fracture clinics for orthopedic surgeons. Why can't such things be done for addiction services?
Recent events demonstrate that the choice of a suitable location to treat addicts requires the co-operation between the Ministry of Health and Long-Term Health and the local municipality, in this case the Windsor city council.
Unless they step up to the challenge, addiction treatment services will remain unplanned and inefficient. Those who suffer from addiction and the doctors who treat them have at least as much right to feel angry as the residents of Lincoln Road.
As a physician, I would very much like to be part of the solution here but we will need assistance. I look forward to cooperating with local and provincial government setting up a community resource in a suitable location and this may well be an ideal opportunity to create a hub for treatment resources that is linked to complementary services. I believe my patients deserve this.
DR. TONY HAMMER, Windsor
© Copyright (c) The Windsor Star
WINDSOR, Ont. — A new addiction clinic in a residential area of Windsor has given new hope to addicts but new fear to neighbours.
The former 2,000-square-foot Drouillard Road Clinic has transformed into the more modern, 5,000-square-foot Erie-St. Clair Clinic in the 1500 block of Lincoln Road, sandwiched between the Essex Terminal Railway and middle-class homes. Four doctors serve more than 400 patients.
"I don't think it should be here," said Nycole Colley, who lives with family across the street. "It's bad for the kids in the neighbourhood. It should be in a hospital setting, or downtown. It shouldn't be in a residential area."
Colley said she sometimes feels uncomfortable walking past the clinic, which opened a week ago, and plans to attend a meeting at the facility tonight to express her concerns.
The clinic has fielded angry calls, while some patients have been called "prostitute" and other names.
On Easter Monday, clinic staff found a garbage bag filled with dog poop waiting for them at the door.
"It's all about stigma, discrimination, being judgmental, but they don't know what our patients are going through," Erie-St. Clair Clinic executive director Peter Richtig said Tuesday. "They tell us, 'You think you're do-gooders, but you're do-badders.'
"They say, 'You can't fix these people. They're broken.
"They'll never be good.'"
But Richtig said it's just the opposite: that patient after patient feel their lives were saved.
Andy, a 30-year-old patient who did not want to use his real name, understands why neighbours feel uncomfortable.
But as someone who was once robbed at gunpoint in Detroit, where he went to buy heroin, and who spent a night in jail after customs agents found drugs on him -- Andy considers the methadone clinic a lifeline.
"Methadone helped me totally," said Andy, who was clean for nine years with the help of methadone but who recently started using dilaudid again.
"The whole time I was on it I was clean, and that's what's important to me. I know it helps a lot of people."
Dr. Tony Hammer, who founded the Drouillard Road Clinic and now leads the new facility, believes it will benefit the community.
"When we first moved into the methadone clinic on Drouillard Road, there was concern among the neighbours and various meetings were held," he said. "That was 12 years ago, and I think we've amply proven that we're good neighbours and that we had a beneficial effect on the neighbourhood in terms of reducing drug-related activity."
The two-storey beige building on Lincoln provides opiate treatment through methadone and alcohol treatment through naltrexone.
The facility will include an outreach office of the House of Sophrosyne substance-abuse program for women, and hopes to include counselling services in the near future for men.
Hammer said the move has already boosted patients, who feel more comfortable in the larger, nicer offices. On Tuesday the waiting room was filled with people quietly reading newspapers and magazines.
"I honestly believe that neighbours will come to realize that we're just neighbours and we will have no impact on the lifestyle of the area," Hammer said.
"We're just another agency in the community providing badly needed services."
cpearson@thestar.canwest.com or 519-255-1234