Towards a National Policy on Autonomy and the Treatment of Schizophrenia
October 27, 2015
Hosted by Dr. Gordon Atherley
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Guest Information
Episode Description
Dr. Chris Summerville is CEO of the Schizophrenia Society of Canada, www.schizophrenia.ca. Marni Soupcoff is Executive Director of the Canadian Constitution Foundation, http://theccf.ca/, a registered charity that defends the constitutional rights and freedoms of Canadians in the courts of law and public opinion. They describe their work with their organizations and the services these provide. They explain impairment of decision-making that occurs in schizophrenia and in the wider world of individual Canadians and their families, and the challenges that are created by these occurrences. They describe what they see as the most effective ways of responding to the challenges they’ve identified. They discuss laws and systems, and the changes, if any, they think are necessary for improving the ways autonomy operates Canada’s in mental healthcare systems and the wider world of Canadians and their families, and say whether improvements could be achieved by wider collaboration among experts.
Family Caregivers Unite!
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Family caregivers are the people who provide care to partners, parents, children, brothers, sisters, cousins, friends, neighbors and even co-workers. They are the people who provide care when everyone else has gone home. They are the people who organize the functioning of the home for the person with special needs, and for the family as a whole. They are the coordinators of care, the managers of appointments, the preventers of loneliness, and the makers of decisions even to the point of Power of Attorney. And they are so often people who themselves are burdened with their own health challenges and who may be in only marginally better health than the persons to whom they are providing family caregiving.
Dr. Gordon Atherley
Dr Gordon Atherley holds the British equivalent of the Canadian PhD and MD degrees, and LLD, Honoris Causa, from Canada’s Simon Fraser University. His awards include Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, UK. His medical specialties are occupational medicine and public health.
As first President and Chief Executive Officer of the Canadian Centre for Occupational Health and Safety, the Canadian equivalent of the US National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health, he led the creation of Canada’s electronic information service in occupational health and safety, now used in more than 40 countries.
In academia, he held senior, tenured, full-time positions, including departmental chair, in university faculties of physics, engineering, and medicine. He is the author of a textbook and numerous articles and publications.
Since retiring from medical practice, he’s built up Greyhead Associates, which critically researches the safety, effectiveness and fairness of health services for persons with special needs.
Through Virtual Care International, a company of which he’s President, he’s involved in providing sensible technology to family caregivers to help them with their responsibilities, workloads, and concerns.
Now an activist, he urges family caregivers to unite because, more and more, it’s not just their families who depend on them, it’s also the healthcare system as a whole, as it struggles to meet more and more needs of more and more people.
