Psychologist Leigh Sheldon Highlights Barriers in Indigenous Mental Health Access | Mind Games

Psychologist Leigh Sheldon is the owner and operator of Indigenous Psychological Services in Alberta. She is from Swan River First Nation in Kinuso, Alberta. She highlights the barriers many of her clients face when trying to access needed mental health care through Canada's Non-Insured Health Benefits (NIHB) Program for Indigenous peoples. She says the NIHB is an excessively bureaucratic process that makes it difficult for clients to get registered for healthcare coverage that is supposed to be available for them. In this video she talks about a man who was living on the streets without financial means, but the NIHB wouldn't cover his mental health care. She says it is upsetting when she can't do anything to help because her hands are tied by the NIHB system

In a two-year investigation TVO, the IJB, and Toronto Star journalists revealed gaps in Canada’s Non-Insured Health Benefits (NIHB) Program for Indigenous peoples. The journalists interviewed over 60 current and former clients, therapists, physicians, and Indigenous mental health advocates, many of whom described a “broken” system that, they claimed, sometimes does more harm than good.

TVO, the IJB and the Toronto Star reached out to Canadian federal officials overseeing the NIHB program. They denied that the system suffers from serious flaws.
https://ijb.utoronto.ca/news/indigenous-services-canada-nihb-mental-health-accountability-documents/

Is Canada’s mental-health system failing Indigenous people?
https://www.tvo.org/article/is-canadas-mental-health-system-failing-indigenous-people

Canada’s Indigenous mental health program is meant to be a lifeline. Instead, it’s so mired in red tape it seems ‘set up to deter people from accessing’ care
https://www.thestar.com/news/investigations/canadas-indigenous-mental-health-program-is-meant-to-be-a-lifeline-instead-its-so-mired/article_58c85d60-9860-11ef-9a95-cf0c83dcf8fd.html

A murder conviction. Sex with an ex-client. Defending residential schools. Why a program for Indigenous patients uses therapists with troubling pasts.
https://www.thestar.com/news/investigations/a-murder-conviction-sex-with-an-ex-client-defending-residential-schools-why-a-program-for/article_a01e379a-9796-11ef-a33d-1f85862810ee.html

Chiefs of Ontario deeply concerned about mental health providers enrolled in the Non-Insured Health Benefits program
https://chiefs-of-ontario.org/chiefs-of-ontario-deeply-concerned-about-mental-health-providers-enrolled-in-the-non-insured-health-benefits-program/

#IndigenousHealth #MentalHealthAwareness #NIHBProgram

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