Mental health issues on the rise for local newcomers

CONNOR LUCZKA, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter

With an alarming trend of mental-health related issues facing local newcomers in Stratford, the Multicultural Association of Perth Huron (MAPH) is asking for help from everybody in the community, but also from local police in particular.

Stratford Police Service (SPS) Chief Greg Skinner attended the conference with MacGregor Austin-Olsen, mental health, wellbeing and resilience coordinator. He agreed the issues of today hinge on mental health and the community’s collective response to issues.

“Mental health is extremely near and dear to my heart,” Skinner said. “When I started in policing 37 years ago, we didn't have the issues that our officers are dealing with today. … In the old days, I was dealing with break-and-enters and traffic crashes and assaults and things like that. We're still dealing with those, but in addition, our officers are also dealing with mental health, they're dealing with homelessness, they're dealing with addiction, they're dealing with suicide, they're dealing with family violence much more often, and just conflict in general in the community.

“And those issues come with extreme complexities to them. We're not going to arrest our way out of the issues that we're in.”

As highlighted throughout the conference, many of the individuals MAPH assists are refugees from hazardous and fraught environments and the organization itself doesn’t have the resources to address the issues those people have.

Austin-Olsen suggested collaboration will be key to a community’s response to mental-health issues and that one of the issues is services and supports are siloed and not well known outside of those who use the programs. Additionally and especially for newcomers, there may be stigma around reaching out for help, which only makes it more difficult for service providers to offer help.

“As far as newcomers – because it is such a complex journey to Canada, to Stratford, to the snow, to a very different world – some of those old habits, those old stigmas around mental health, possibly from other cultures, from other communities, can have the negative impact of keeping individuals from reaching up for help,” he said.

Austin-Olsen suggested services are available, it's just about knowing where to go and who to contact and to maintain relationships, and that his and the police’s services are available to educate and help the organization.

Afterwards, MAPH founder and president Geza Wordofa thanked everyone for attending the conference and assisting with the work they do in serving the community.

Skinner later told the Times that while the organization keeps track of suicide, self-harm and other mental-health related calls, they do not track demographics of those involved in calls for service. That being said, he indicated he is aware of self-harm incidents regarding newcomers and that it is relatively low – though he stressed even one case is too many.

At the Nov. 20 police services board meeting, the monthly statistics for October were released. In Stratford, there were 40 mental-health related calls and three suicides (including attempted suicides). There were four mental-health calls and one suicide in St. Marys and there were no similar calls in Perth South, which is also in the purview of the SPS.