These two seeming old men are a fixture in my neighbouthood, exchanging smiles whether you give them a moment of your time, or a donation, or both.

Since there is not much of an employment market for old alcoholic (ex or current) with bad teeth, bad hygiene (just where would you bathe?) and poor heath with no skills? From here you cannot stat with creating more jobs, first you heal the person, then exploit them for tax revenue.

Sadly in the life of people with a mental illness there is no treatment option other than truly toxic drugs.  Drugs with side effects so destructive no one would take them for any other illness, but if you are mentally ill you are not given choices and often you are not competent enough to make informed decisions either. All of that and very often the mental illness is not properly diagnosed, many diagnosis are come upon in ER after a ten minute chat with a psychiatry resident. 

Many mental illnesses do not require, and can actually be made worse by anti-psychotic drugs.  Most "schizophrenics" have only one or two psychotic episodes and the use of these toxic drugs is prophylactic - does that make any sense? Why is anyone afraid of people being psychotic, the incidence of acts of violence is higher among the "not" mentally ill population. Why not embrace what could just as easily be considered eccentric or artistic ad let the episode pass. Most probably there would be more compliance with hospital stays if there was no terrible therapy to fear other than talk. What woman could be cured of a mental illness if the option left her 100 pounds heavier? I was once given medication to "happy me up" when having been raped left me a lot less happy, and immediately gained 60 pounds, and that after only four weeks. The weight took me several years to lose, and the experience left me completely distrustful of "psychiatry".

Most if not all mental illness can be treated with proper talk therapy and analysis. Of course those treatments take time, no magic pill. The treatment of the mentally ill are more about making the patient "manageable" and little to nothing about the patient's own "quality of life". Most people have no one fighting for their well-being, relatives would take them home only if they will be "manageable, not to weird or embarrassing. Fritz Perl, R.D. Lang and the rest of the humanists are still spinning in their graves.

I am not just talking out a need to be an armchair critic. My mother was frequently psychotic and is now older, stable without medication for her mental illness, but also diabetic with congestive heart disease, neither condition runs in her family.  My son and his father also were diagnosed with depressive illness. My X was blind at age 32 thanks to anti-psychotics prescribed during a depressive episode in his mid-twenties. My son refused the anti-psychotics and is managing his life very nicely without.

I truly wonder if anyone is really helped much at all by these drugs. Sadly it is not considered cost effective to treat patients with talk. As a trained clinical counsellor with extensive studies in analytical psychology and biofeedback techniques I have never seen a hopeless case non-responsive to human contact (or even a doggie).

One day the fog will clear and pharmaceutical giants will be unmasked as the villains they were.  Society will have to bear the fantastic costs of diabetes, heart disease, blindness etc. which will be much more than training and employing many psychiatrists and counselling psychologists using Gestalt and person centred analysis. When will they learn that magic bullets only work on werewolves (which co-incidentally was a myth borne out of patients with "lunacy" or moon madness).
this was the article which brought the comments on:

_____________________
ALLIANCE FOR HUMAN RESEARCH PROTECTION (AHRP) Promoting Openness, Full Disclosure, and Accountability http://www.ahrp.org/cms/

A front page report in The New York Times describes a psychotropic drug-induced catastrophe that has befallen patients who obeyed their psychiatrists, and swallowed the antipsychotic drugs prescribed by psychiatrists who insisted the drugs were for the patients own good.

The truth, however, is inescapable-the cover-up no longer sustainable as thousands of patients with drug-induced diabetes come out of the shadows. Clozapine (Clozaril) and its far more widely prescribed first-cousins, olanzapine (Zyprexa), risperidone (Risperdal), quetiapine (Seroquel) and ziprasidone (Geodon)-are inducing a debilitating, lethal disease--diabetes. The New York Times reports "Studies have indicated that dozens of these patients died from diabetes-related complications."

Indeed, diabetes is a chronic debilitating lethal disease: In 1985 "the diabetes mortality rate was 8.5 per 100,000 person-years with diabetes as the underlying cause of death, 31.5 per 100,000 person-years with diabetes as an underlying or contributory cause, and 82.7 per 100,000 person-years if all deaths among diabetic individuals were counted." [1]

In 2003, "Of 10 152 total deaths in 1970-1994, 1384 (13.6%) met the criteria for prevalent diabetes mellitus..The mortality burden associated with DM increased significantly between 1970 and 1994."

These antipsychotics are the very drugs recommended in psychiatry's prescribing manuals as first line treatments. The Times report evades entirely the matter of responsibility borne by these drugs' manufacturers, psychiatry's leadership and institutions that have, for over a decade, promoted the increased use of these drugs--even for children as young as two. They have done so while concealing the deadly effects produced by the drugs.

Dr. Donna Ames Wirshing, a psychiatrist at the West Los Angeles Veterans Administration Medical Center acknowledges that: "Most psychiatrists barely look at their patients." When she asked 30 psychiatrists how many monitored their patients' weight by weighing them; 3 hands went up.

To his credit, Dr. Jeffrey Lieberman, Chairman of psychiatry at Columbia University, a foremost schizophrenia researcher and an early enthusiastic promoter of Clozapine and the atypical antipsychotics that followed, appears to have turned a corner. After analyzing thedata -which has yet to be released-from the government-sponsored, CATIE study, he has acknowledged the drugs' lethal effects: "It's bad enough that these people have mental illness, and then they take treatments and they bring on diabetes..Sort of a cruel irony in this is that all of the drugs do it to some degree, but the ones that have the most effect cause the most weight gain and metabolic side effects. There's increasing discomfort that these are driving up deaths and lowering quality of life."

But other influential psychiatrists continue to keep their eyes shut, lest their corporate grants and consultancies received from these drugs' manufacturers dry up. Indeed, Dr. Gail Daumit, an assistant professor of medicine at Johns Hopkins observed: "Psychiatrists are literally watching patients balloon up before their eyes."

This demonstrates how little psychiatrists understand (or care about) real medical diseases and the prevention of such diseases. Mental disorders do not meet the definition of physical, medical diseases, and psychiatry lacks basic scientific tools.

In 2000, Dr. John Geddes of Oxford analyzed 52 published reports involving 12,649 patients, noting that the claimed benefits were fraudulent: the studies were rigged by comparing "excessive doses" of the comparator drug (Haldol) to the newly marketed drugs. Thus, Dr. Geddes concluded: "there is no clear evidence that atypical antipsychotics are more effective or are better tolerated than conventional antipsychotics."

We challenge those psychiatrists who continue to claim that "These drugs are enormously beneficial," as if the benefits outweigh the lethal effects, to show evidence. The Big Lie about these deadly drugs was disseminated by an interdependent juggernaut: At the apex are the manufacturers of psychotropic drugs, followed by the beneficiaries of these companies largesse:

1. psychiatrists and their professional organizations-including the American Psychiatric Association, the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology, American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry;

2. state mental health systems;

3. industry-funded support groups and organizations that claim to be "patient advocates;"

4. government oversight and funding agencies-including the FDA, the National Institute of Mental Health, the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, and the Veterans Affairs Administration;

5. medical journals that publish fraudulent, biased reports;

6. the media that has grown dependent on drug advertising

When confronted with the indisputable harm resulting from antipsychotic drugs, Dr. Kenneth Duckworth, medical director for the National Alliance on Mental Illness (no longer called National Alliance for the Mentally Ill) answers like a well-trained robot who has been programmed to look at the world through drug industry lenses. Thus, he accepts the death sentence dealt to patients rather than question the drug-focused paradigm that is killing them. "I think the field has been passive. We viewed [drug-induced diabetes] it that we do symptoms and you run your life."

References:

1. JW Ochi, LJ Melton, PJ Palumbo and CP Chu , A population-based study of diabetes mortality Diabetes Care, Vol 8, Issue 3 224-229, 1985. 2. Randal J. et al, Trends in the Mortality Burden Associated With Diabetes Mellitus: A Population-Based Study in Rochester, Minn, 1970-1994 Arch Intern Med. 2003;163:445-451. 3. Geddes, J, "Atypical Antipsychotics in the Treatment of Schizophrenia: Systematic Overview and Meta-Regression Analysis," British Medical Journal, 2000, 321:1371-1376.


http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/12/health/12diabetes.html? THE NEW YORK TIMES June 12, 2006 In Diabetes, One More Burden for the Mentally Ill

By N. R. KLEINFIELD

Dr. John Newcomer is a psychiatrist who generally treats people with severe ailments of the mind and spirit. But before his patients sit down, before he hears about their clammy paranoia or renegade voices, Dr. Newcomer wants to know about their waist size.

He steers them to a scale to learn their weight. He orders a blood sugar test. If big numbers come up, he begins a conversation about Type 2 diabetes , a disease associated with obesity that is appearing with alarming frequency among the mentally ill.

"Uncontrolled diabetes can ruin a person's life as much as uncontrolled schizophrenia ," said Dr. Newcomer, a professor of psychiatry at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis.

In fact, among the mentally ill, roughly one in every five appear to develop diabetes - about double the rate of the general population. This is a little-recognized surge, but one that is jolting mental health professionals into rethinking how they care for an often neglected population.

For decades, psychiatrists have worried primarily about patients' mental states, making sure they did no harm to themselves or others because of unrelenting voices or a smothering depression.

Far more of the mentally ill, however, die today from diabetes and complications like heart disease than from suicide. Given that mental health specialists are often the only doctors a mentally ill diabetic ever sees, some have begun to debate the customary limits of psychiatric practice, deciding to pay much more attention to physical ailments.

In particular, psychiatrists must confront the fact that diabetes, marked by dangerously high blood sugar, is often aggravated, if not precipitated, by some of the very medicines they prescribe: antipsychotic pills that have been linked to swift weight gain and the illness itself.

"It's bad enough that these people have mental illness, and then they take treatments and they bring on diabetes," said Dr. Jeffrey Lieberman, chairman of the psychiatry department at the Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons.

Treating the diabetic mentally ill can be formidable. The regimen of blood testing, dieting and exercise that controls Type 2 diabetes is often beyond the attentions of the mentally ill. For patients, the task of taming two debilitating illnesses can haunt their lives. Michael Schiraldi, 44, a Manhattan man who has both schizoaffective disease and diabetes, said his mental illness, now stabilized, was the lesser of his concerns.

"I can't really control the diabetes," he said. "I might die from it."

The doctors who regard diabetes as a galloping threat to the mentally ill acknowledge that many in their profession still dispute, or ignore, its consequences. Dr. Newcomer said colleagues often whine about how hard it is to weigh patients. " 'Oh', they'll say, 'there's no scale' or 'It's in a closet someplace,' " he said.

Yet he says he hopes other doctors will eventually share his perspective as diabetes expands among the mentally ill and deepens into an even graver problem.

Betrayals of Body and Mind

Carole Ernst doesn't know how she got diabetes.

Genes? Her mother had it.

Lifestyle? She eats more than she should, exercises less than advisable.

Or was it the pills that shushed the TV?

The TV no longer speaks to her. She stared levelly at the set in her messy room. It was blessedly quiet.

She is 53 and has battled mental illness since childhood. The pills for her illness, diagnosed as schizoaffective disorder, have helped. But she feels they have also made her fat around her abdomen, the kind of fat that can lead to diabetes.

So even though Ms. Ernst feels better mentally - she no longer imagines everyone despises her - diabetes has been a crippling insult to her troubled psyche. In the late hours, alone in her room on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, trapped in the undertow of two potent diseases, she runs on empty.

"Some nights, the only thing I can do is read my Bible," she said. "I look in there to find answers. They're hard to find."

Diabetes on top of mental illness asks a lot of a person, and of society. Mental illness is itself a money sponge, an expense borne largely by tax dollars. But that cost may be dwarfed by the bill to manage the heart attacks and amputations that diabetes bestows.

With numerous mental institutions emptied, patients often live in lightly supervised settings. Many occupy adult homes that struggle, for good reasons and bad, at providing basic services and are poorly equipped to treat diabetes. Others live on their own, sometimes in boxes beneath bridges or crumpled in doorways.

Imagine taking on diabetes if you live alone and find living itself to be a handful. "I try not to drink sugared sodas, but sometimes I forget," Ms. Ernst said. "I'll buy candy - Mary Janes or banana cookies. I know I'm not fooling anybody - it's my arms and legs they're going to cut off - but sometimes I get the craving for something sweet." She sat at a round table in her room, a cool evening of early spring, cradling a stuffed bunny. She flicked a small smile. "I'm sorry it's not neater," she said, looking around. "I'm trying."

Ms. Ernst embodies the difficulty of confronting the two diseases with all their complexities. She takes clozapine for her mind because she can't manage without it. She has diabetes and can't defeat her weight. "Disgusting, that clozapine," she said. "Makes you eat everything under the sun." She takes a lineup of other drugs, too, not all positive for her weight. She had hit 250, fought her way to 198, and is now at 221.

She lives at Gouverneur Court, a residence run by a nonprofit organization, where about 15 of the 66 mentally ill residents have diabetes. "Some say they don't have it, but they do," said Abby Stuthers, the nurse who works there. "Or they say they have a little diabetes."

Ms. Ernst freely recounts her callused life. Her marriage exploded. Once she was smacked in the face with a glass ashtray. She opened her mouth - every tooth was missing. Now diabetes. Her blood sugar has been O.K., but her vision has worsened. And she is inconsistent, prey to the fury of her demons.

Susanne Rendeiro, a family nurse practitioner who serves as her primary care physician, said Ms. Ernst misses half her appointments. Recently, in reviewing her drugs, Ms. Rendeiro asked about her blood pressure pills. Puzzled, Ms. Ernst said she was not on blood pressure pills. Mrs. Rendeiro said she had supposedly been taking them for two years. "I want to be the best I can be," Ms. Ernst said. "Nobody changes overnight."

Treatment and Cruel Ironies

There was always a lot else wrong with the mentally ill - heart problems and cancer and H.I.V., as well as diabetes. But for psychiatrists and clinicians it was enough to worry about mental needs that beggared the imagination.

The spread of diabetes, however, is making the physical conditions impossible to ignore. "Psychiatrists are literally watching patients balloon up before their eyes," said Dr. Gail Daumit, an assistant professor of medicine at Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions.

This has been especially true since the advent of so-called atypical antipsychotic drugs in the early 1990's. Studies indicate that these drugs can alter glucose metabolism and stimulate weight gain, particularly in people predisposed to diabetes.

"Sort of a cruel irony in this," said Dr. Lieberman of Columbia, "is that all of the drugs do it to some degree, but the ones that have the most effect cause the most weight gain and metabolic side effects. There's increasing discomfort that these are driving up deaths and lowering quality of life."

Some cases have been striking: a patient packing on 50 pounds in mere months, for example. Diabetes arrived as quickly, and sometimes subsided if the drugs were halted. In certain instances, there was no weight gain, but still diabetes came, often in patients who were already heavy. Studies have indicated that dozens of these patients died from diabetes-related complications.

The Food and Drug Administration requires atypical antipsychotics to bear warning labels about diabetes risk, though drug makers say patients taking them who develop diabetes were destined to get it anyway.

Robin Stigliano's psychiatrist has her taking Haldol by injection as well as one of the drugs most closely associated with weight gain, Zyprexa. They have helped her schizophrenia, but Ms. Stigliano, 37, who lives in a Brooklyn adult home, has seen her weight soar to 241 pounds from 150. And when she gets her Haldol infusion every three weeks, all she wants to do is sleep. "It's my favorite activity," she said.

Without the drugs, psychiatrists believe, many high-functioning patients would find themselves in institutions or jail. "These drugs are enormously beneficial," said Dr. P. Murali Doraiswamy, head of biological psychiatry at Duke University. "But they have an Achilles heel."

A few years ago, Dr. Doraiswamy reported a case of a mentally ill person who got diabetes and was prescribed insulin. The impact of having two serious conditions overwhelmed him. He wound up trying to kill himself by insulin overdose.

Some researchers think it is possible the rash of diabetes stems in part from mental illness itself. Studies associate the onset of diabetes with depression. The mentally ill are also at high risk because they tend to eat poorly, get little exercise and have limited access to health care.

In a 2003 survey, the city's health department found that about 17 percent of adults who reported symptoms of a mental illness, or 52,000, have diagnosed diabetes. Elsewhere, rates are as great or greater. Even these estimates may be low, experts said, because the mentally ill see doctors sporadically and their illnesses may be underdiagnosed.

The rates of diabetes and obesity are nudging Dr. Doraiswamy and others in his field - in modest ways thus far - toward prevention, toward screening people for diabetes before choosing drugs and connecting better with primary care doctors.

"This wouldn't be a big problem if most mentally ill patients had a primary care provider, but they don't," said Dr. Newcomer at Washington University. "And it's never been part of the game plan for the psychiatrist to write the prescription for your blood pressure medicine or your diabetes medicine."

He feels change is imperative. "The days when I don't do windows can't go on," he said.

Dr. Kenneth Duckworth, medical director for the National Alliance on Mental Illness, agreed. "I think the field has been passive," he said. "We viewed it that we do symptoms and you run your life."

Stimulating change is not easy. Psychiatrists have a problem simply getting patients to stay on their drugs. Resources are inadequate.

"Psychiatry is historically a couch and the chair," Dr. Duckworth said. "How do you get movement into the equation?"

He said that he weighed his patients, checked sugars. But few psychiatrists are set up to do this. Treating diabetes, they say, was not what they were trained to do. And where, they ask, do they find time in 15-minute appointments?

"Most psychiatrists barely look at their patients," said Dr. Donna Ames Wirshing, a staff psychiatrist at the West Los Angeles Veterans Administration Medical Center. She recently asked 30 how many weighed their patients; 3 hands went up.

Dr. Wirshing and her husband, Dr. William Wirshing, are experimenting with the use of nutrition and exercise coaches for mentally ill patients.

Couches could be replaced with exercise bikes. Or, as Dr. David Hellerstein, associate professor of clinical psychiatry at Columbia's College of Physicians and Surgeons, noted, "Instead of having the patient lie down and you say, 'So tell me why you fight with your brother,' you could say to the patient, 'Let's take a walk around the block while you tell me about why you fight with your brother.' "

For the most part, however, psychiatrists confront the knotty questions without ready answers.

If some 10 percent of schizophrenics kill themselves, and clozapine is the only antipsychotic medication demonstrated to significantly reduce suicide, but it has grave side effects, like its association with diabetes, is it miracle or monster? Or both?

"When I chat with patients, about clozapine, I say, 'This may give you your mind back, but it may hurt your body,' " Dr. Duckworth said. "I think of it as psychiatric chemotherapy. Your hair won't fall out, but you may get diabetes."

How do patients respond? "Some say, 'If this will give me my mind, I'll take anything,' " he said. "Some say, 'There's nothing wrong with me, why are we even having this conversation?' About 60 percent of schizophrenics don't recognize that they have it. There are very few easy answers in my line of work."

Housing the Ill and Diabetic

Surf Manor squats on the tip of Coney Island, one of the dozens of profit-making adult homes in the city where thousands of the mentally ill live. Residents complain about the food. Activities are light on exertion. The week's offerings are taped to the wall: dominoes, blackjack, manicures, jewelry class.

So the men and women eat, sleep, smoke, watch TV, sleep - then do it all over again. Unsurprisingly, those who live there say, dozens of the 200 residents struggle with diabetes.

These often-troubled homes where so many of the mentally ill are housed, frequently grumbling about inadequate attention to their needs and their dignity, can be hideously difficult places for someone at high risk for diabetes. And that is basically everyone who lives there.

Leslie Hinden, a chatty man of 51, sat listlessly in the lounge, near the junk food dispensers. He'd be buying sweets but was broke from binging.

He has had schizoaffective disease - characterized by symptoms of schizophrenia and depression - for most of his life. Sometimes he hears Indian war whoops in his head. About 17 years ago, he picked up diabetes, too.

His blood sugar was 289 that morning, he said. A normal fasting blood sugar reading is below 126 milligrams per deciliter.

"I cheated," he said. "Last night I ate two eclairs. Had a Coke. A lot of times I don't cheat and it goes up to 300. I don't know what to do."

Why the binge last night?

"I don't know," he said. "I felt scared."

A recent State Department of Health sampling of 19 homes found that nearly a quarter of residents had diabetes. The homes say they do what they can. Some have diabetes sections in the dining halls, where occupants get a sugar-free dessert.

"I'm not a doctor, but we're very helpful," said Mordechai Deutscher, the case manager at Surf Manor, who said he did not think the home had many diabetics. "The people here are doing very well."

Even mental health advocates have not given diabetes much attention. The Commission on Quality of Care and Advocacy for Persons with Disabilities, a state watchdog agency, said it has never examined diabetes prevalence or care.

At Surf Manor, Mr. Hinden, like the other diabetic residents, cannot have a blood sugar meter or give himself insulin. Needles are considered perilous. He depends on the staff. But no one prescribes motivation or understanding. And where diabetes requires vigilant self-management, illnesses like schizophrenia often mean memory problems and lack of drive. "I'll be honest with you, I don't understand diabetes," Mr. Hinden said. "I don't understand it at all."

Joseph Franklin, 47, sat down, all 300-plus pounds of him. He said he has been taking diabetes drugs for seven years. "It's just in case," he said. He said he was bipolar: "I couldn't see people with shoes on. If I saw someone with shoes on, it could do something to my forehead." He spread out some greeting cards he had made. He leaned close. "Listen, I don't want everyone to hear this," he said, "but it's very possible that, unless the doctor made a mistake, I do have diabetes."

A stoic man of great girth named Lee Symons, 57, nodded. He had it, too. He hears guitars and banjos thrumming in his head. Was he trying to diet? "No one told me to," he murmured. What about the diabetes? "As long as it doesn't hurt, I don't mind it," he said. "It's just diabetes."

Copyright 2006 The New York Times

At the heart of it I don't think it is actually privatisation that causes the problem. Heartlessness and the general malaise of the minds of a population who think if you are down and out you probably deserve it. all of the west European nations have a two tier system where those who can purchase private plans, but those who cannot are still covered and protected to a level of dignity well spelled out by the UN, and frankly a level to which all of the major religions subscribe.

At least in the US a person in dyer need cannot be turned down in ER, here they can for not having the proper coverage. Our health care plan is not free, nor universal, and the bottom line social assistance version is a cut far below acceptable. Is it the government's job, or that of our communities? After all, who voted the bastards in to begin with? We live in countries with tremendous wealth and there isn't the charity to keep people in need falling through the cracks.

It fell apart when medicine became an "industry", doctors became corporations, and everyone was more concerned for their bottom line than mortality rates and matters involving quality of life. Who is to blame? For started a media who does not cover through proper investigation the atrocius manner in which people in need, persons guilty of nothing but being the unfortunate stricken by disease or disability. Press covering matters of medicine are more interested in breakthroughs, celebrity causes, and big newsworthy research studies, many of which are entirely provided to the media by the pharmaceutical companies.

So where does a suffering mortal go? Let me know, because I haven't been able to find answers either.

In no small part, it also was affected by the political correctness that followed the age of disco and selfishness. Once we were no longer thought of as crippled, or sick, lame but instead given some correct term to hang on to, palliative rather than dying, disabled rather than crippled, we now have images as capable persons no matter what, making us persons who can manage just fine. What happens when we cannot take care of ourselves or be useful members of society because we are just too sick or crippled? Well it is unpleasant and makes society feel like they might have failed and they'd rather sweep those notions under the rug where no one will see and no one will feel responsible to do something about it.

Until kindness comes back into fashion, it will be a very hard and painful tie for all of us branded as losers within this society. It was a sign when the funeral of Mother Teresa was so heavily overshadowed by the funeral of Princess Diana. More is done in the name of the princess than the saint. What a shock.

My view earlier today from the balcony. Poor guy, and sadly the sign on the cast of furnishings which had scrawled on the "my neighbour gave me bedbugs and now I have to get new furniture" was lost on him.



Incidentally, Lavender discourages bedbug infestations, spray solution of lavender oil 10/1 and water on bedlinens, furnishings, carpeting. Those buggers really move in anywhere. You can read an article recently printed on the topic in the NY times
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/27/nyregion/27bugs.htm

NEWS RELEASE May 8th, 2006

UN Experts question Canada's inaction on poverty, housing, aboriginal rights

GENEVA - "Many of the issues our committee raised in 1993 and 1998 are unfortunately still live issues today," said Ariranga Govindasamy Pillay, a member of the UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights during the committee's review of Canada's performance. "Years later, the situation appears to be unchanged, and in some respects worse. There is continuing homelessness and reliance on food banks, security of tenure is not still not enjoyed by tenants, child tax benefits are still clawed back, (...) the situation of aboriginal peoples, migrants and people with disabilities doesn 't seem to be improving."

"The Committee is right to challenge Canada to address the depth of poverty which has left the most marginalized people worse off than ever before. There are still too many people who are still denied adequate housing, a decent standard of living, and access to health and higher education," said Aimée Clark, from the National Anti-Poverty Organization, one of the Canadian non-governmental organizations (NGOs) participating in the Committee review currently held in Geneva.

Several committee members were disturbed by the lack of investment in social programs and by continuing high poverty rates of the most marginalized (women, aboriginal peoples, people of colour and immigrants***here the author leaves out "women with disabilities" despite its having been a recognized group of the poorest of the poor in Canada***ed.)d wondered why this has happened when the government is enjoying budget surpluses year after year.

Canada was asked about a number of aboriginal issues, including the Six Nations and the Lubicon Nation land claims, and on-going issues about discrimination against women under the Indian Act. The Committee also expressed serious concern about the disproportionately high rates of violence (including murder) inflicted against Indigenous girls and women in Canada, and raised the correlation between high rates of homelessness among girls and sexual abuse in the home.

Today, Committee members are expected to ask further probing questions about Canada's compliance. Issues to be covered include housing, social assistance, employment insurance, education and health. The committee also wants to know how Canada will improve accountability through domestic laws. "Economic and social rights must be enforceable rights, not just distant goals," said Vince Calderhead with the Charter Committee on Poverty Issues. "That's why we are pleased that the Committee is asking why our federal and provincial courts and human rights commissions don't give enough consideration to economic and social rights and why governments continually deny they are accountable to economic, social and cultural rights in court."

The Review began on Friday May 5th and will end today, May 8th. Participating in the review process are Canadian NGOs, representing the First nations, African Canadians, women, poor people as well as legal experts. The UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights is expected to submit its concluding observations on May 19th, 2006.

For more information, please contact:

In Canada:
Dennis Howlett (National Anti-Poverty Organization); 613-889-0141
Beth Berton-Hunter (Amnesty International Canada) 416 363-9933 #32

In Geneva:
Josephine Gray, (Low-Income Families Together, LIFT) 416 827 7119

--
Dennis Howlett
Executive Director/directeur général
National Anti-Poverty Organization / l'Organisation nationale anti-pauvreté
1 Nicholas St., Suite 1210,
Ottawa ON K1N 7B7 Canada
tél 613.789.0096; toll free/sans frais 1.800.810.1076;
fax 613.789.0141
e-mail dhowlett@napo-onap.ca
website www.napo-onap.ca


**************************

Take Back Mother's Day
- March & Protest May 14th 2006 at 2:00 pm 15 Huntley Street (Sherbourne and Bloor) - Toronto

For most Canadians, Mother's Day is a time when families honour their mother's hard work. But for many of low income families find that on Mother's Day, peace and joy is in very short supply, especially now that more than 30,000 of their youngsters languish in foster homes.

We did not lose our children because of abuse, rather we lost our children because of poverty, lack of affordable adequate housing, being single, being young, having a child with special needs, being in recovery from substance abuse issues, having survived an abusive partner, or having worked in the Adult Entertainment Industry.

Silenced for decades by shame and guilt, we suffered alone with our grief, believing that we were the only ones. Now we find that we are not alone. Mother's Day began as a day to honour the public activism of mothers. It began in 1870 because mother's declared that they would not lose their children as casualties of war.

On Sunday May 14th 2006, let's "Take Back Mother's Day" by joining with Mothers across Toronto as we rally in front of the Children's Aid Society at 15 Huntley Street at 2:00pm to demand:

* 40% increase in social assistance rates * The creation of more housing geared to low income families * Build more daycare spaces for low income families * End to the clawback of child tax benefits * End the discrimination against mother's who work in the Adult Entertainment Industry * End the apprehension of children because their mother has a disability * That the city of Toronto create family orientated treatment centres

Since the Mike Harris cutbacks to social assistance payments more and more mother's are in precarious financial circumstances often finding themselves unable to afford their hydro, gas, telephone and other necessities. By not being able to afford these necessities the Children's Aid Society can intervene and remove the child, citing "neglect".

Cutbacks in social programs - particularly in the area of housing- have led to shortages of affordable housing. A recent study by the Children's Aid Society of Toronto found that in the year 2000, housing was a factor in one in five cases where children were taken in care - a dramatic 60% increase over a similar study in 1992. They also found that lack of adequate housing caused a delay in the return of children to their parents in more than 11% of cases.

In cases where their children are taken into care, parents lose their child benefits forcing them to move into smaller apartments or rooms inadequate for living with their children. This creates a catch 22 system where in order for a mother to get her children back she must obtain proper living arrangements that she cannot afford without custody of her children. Thus, it becomes extremely difficult for low income mother's to get their children back once their children are taken into care. Imagine instead a system that worked in the best interest of the children and their mother's instead of a system that perpetrates a cycle of poverty and foster care.

Women with disabilities may find themselves under the scrutiny of Children's Aid Society by virtue of their disability alone. Once scrutinized, it may be difficult to remove oneself from the child protection system. In some cases, women have contacted the Children's Aid Society for support and assistance with parenting, only to find themselves the subject of an investigation. Other women are reported to the authority during pregnancy and have to fight to prevent the removal of their newborn from their care solely because the authority believes their disability prevents them from being able to parent. Other women, perhaps because of vulnerabilities caused by disability (a tendency to defer to authority, for instance), enter into what they believe to be "voluntary" agreements with Children's Aid Society only to find those voluntary arrangements used against them later by the same officials.

Many women experiencing substance abuse issues or mood disorders are often hesitant to seek treatment as they fear that in doing so they may lose their children.

Sex workers (dancers, escorts, dominants, phone sex operators), are also at risk of losing their children due to their profession. Even though it is NOT illegal to be a sex worker in Canada, the Children's Aid workers have discretionary powers for apprehending children of women working in the sex industry. This means that if a CAS worker objects to the mother's profession based on their own personal moral values, her children can be apprehended and taken into care regardless of whether they've experienced any actual abuse.

Furthermore, the number of children who have been taken into temporary custody as a result of witnessing their mother's being assaulted increased by at least 870% (no that is not a typo) between 1993-1998. With limited income supports, affordable regulated childcare, affordable housing, and emergency shelters operating at full capacity, there are few options for women who are being assaulted and abused, leaving them and their children at risk of continued violence, poverty and involvement with the Children's Aid Society. Thus, the shortages in affordable housing and emergency shelters are closely linked to the number of children who are victims of prolonged violence and involvement with the Children's Aid Society.

THIS MOTHER'S DAY LETS STAND UP FOR WOMEN AND THEIR CHILDREN AND TAKE BACK MOTHER'S DAY!

For more information please contact: takebackmothersday@hotmail.com or click on this email link mailto:takebackmothersday@hotmail.com

www.flickr.com More of aletteke's photos tagged with potholes

These photos were taken within a two block radius from my own apartment. It is hard enough to walk and not trip let alone if you are having to use a walker or cane. wheeling it isn't much better, many corners have no sidewalk ramp and wheelchair users are forced to stay on the street.


Shameful, in a city which supposedly is the best in the world to live in. Perhaps the constant harpng on letting addicts have their drugs for free, and lovely places to shoot it too, and their consistently soft conviction on grow-ops is meant to have an ever more drugged and apathetic community who could care less about potholes, and for that matter decent healthcare. It really is shameful, and yet somehow in this very poor part of the city real estate has a single family dwelling set at a value of 600,000 dollar.

A couple of years ago when some big men came and dug up the water mains there was the perfect opportunity to repair the street which thanks to wear and tear now has soft shoulders and crumbling sidewalks. alas a truck came and soft, hot asphalt was tossed over the dirt covered pits and stamped down by big footed men and their shovels, and nothing since. I can imagine how hard it is for an ambulance stretcher to navigate the dirt rubble and loose asphalt. Thanks to the age, poverty and disability levels being terribly high here there are a lot of ambulances, and an even bigger need for decent roads and sidewalks. Of course no Porche owners and the like. My neighbour does have a Mercedes, but it's an older one. somehow I'm having a hard time caring that people in the neighbourhoods that house the "creme de la creme" are having their roads dug up for public transit, hah!

The politics of poverty makes for strange bedfellows.

A surreal air suffused Hamilton's council chambers yesterday morning as politicians from all three levels of government gathered to praise and applaud a man about to step onto an international stage and excoriate two of those same governments for failing to protect the rights of the poor.

Poverty lawyer Craig Foye is bound for Geneva, Switzerland, where on Monday he will address a United Nations committee and accuse the provincial and federal governments of violating international human rights covenants by failing to ensure an adequate standard of living for Hamilton's -- and all of Canada's -- poor.

During a sendoff yesterday morning, Foye reminded an appreciative audience that the Canadian government has signed an international covenant defining poverty as a human rights issue and called inadequate social assistance levels an "emergency" and "our great shame."

Our low levels of social assistance are "sending thousands and thousands of families spiralling ever deeper and deeper into poverty," Foye said.

His remarks were greeted with prolonged applause from the audience and the politicians gathered to see him off.

"I think it is so important to stand in solidarity (with Foye) here today," MPP Ted McMeekin announced from the podium. "Clearly governments aren't doing enough -- all governments aren't doing enough!"

Those critical comments were echoed or amplified by Mayor Larry Di Ianni, MPs David Christopherson and Wayne Marsden, and fellow MPP Andrea Horvath.

Foye's report -- sponsored by the Income Security Working Group's human rights subcommittee and co-authored by Chabriol Colebatch and Deirdre Pike -- uses census data and research from the Social Planning Research Council to document the dire straits many Hamiltonians find themselves in if they depend on government assistance.

The report also documents the way seniors, immigrants, children, aboriginals and single mothers are disproportionately affected by poverty in this city. The report argues that government policies lie at the root of much of our poverty problem.

"The right to an adequate standard of living is not being protected by either (senior) level of government ... social assistance rates remain arbitrary numbers, numbers not tied to any meaningful costs," Foye said yesterday.

"It's not that we don't know or can't figure out these costs ... it's that we ignore those costs."

Two months ago, the report received unanimous approval from city council and yesterday Di Ianni reminded his political colleagues and the audience that "we don't often get unanimity around this table.

"So many people are disadvantaged in this city, 100,000 or so who have to make the kinds of choices none of us here have to make. We have a very long way to go."

The incongruity of hearing politician after politician praise a report and author, who is so strongly condemning politicians and governments, was dealt with head on by Christopherson.

"Some might wonder why are we so excited by having this (report) put on the international stage," Christopherson said at the start of a short but loud and powerful speech.

"All of us, and I'm the most senior politician in this room, bear responsibility of not doing enough."

He looked around the council chambers and continued.

"We've allowed our social agenda to be hijacked by our economic agenda."

Poverty is an issue that can be tackled, if governments will summon the will, he said.

"Post 9/11, all you have to do is say the word 'security' and there's millions of dollars for whatever you want to do. There are things we can do."

Meanwhile in Ottawa, government officials declined to comment on Foye's report or discuss what Canadian officials would be telling the committee in Geneva next week.

"It's true that we will make a statement to the committee, but we cannot talk about the statement until it is tabled with the committee," said Rejean Beaulieu of the Foreign Affairs Department.

"I'll be happy to send you a copy once it is tabled."

bdunphy@thespec.com 905-526-3262

Craig Foye will be filing occasional dispatches from Geneva. You can find them at www.thespec.com and at www.hamiltonlegalclinics.ca

Local politicians fete lawyer heading to UN to slam Canada's failure to protect the needy.

Source URL: http://www.hamiltonspectator.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=hamilton/L ayout/Article_Type1&c=Article&cid=1146261014012&call_pageid=1020420665036&co l=1014656511815

Canada fails to meet economic and social rights obligations, United Nations told

OTTAWA, April 28, 2006 - Canada is going backwards on its commitments to implement the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, a network of Canadian non-governmental organizations say in presentations they will make to a UN Committee on May 1.

Though Canada is one of the wealthiest nations in the world with low unemployment and record Federal budget surpluses, too many people are being denied the human rights guaranteed by the Covenant, such as the rights to an adequate standard of living, to social security, to housing, to food, to health, and fair working conditions including fair wages. Disproportionate numbers of Aboriginal people, women, people with disabilities, people of colour, refugees and youth experience poverty and other rights violations in Canada today.

Over 25 representatives of non-governmental groups will be presenting their evidence to the Committee on economic, Social and Cultural Rights, which meets in Geneva beginning on May 1. The damning evidence includes: welfare rates that in some provinces are only 20% to 30% of the poverty line, those in dire need being denied welfare, minimum wages that fall thousands of dollars below the poverty line, even for a single person working full time, an estimated 100,000 to 250,000 people who are homeless and over 800,000 needing to use food banks each month.

The Canadian government will appear before the Committee on May 5 and 8. The Committee is expected to issue its Concluding Observations including recommendations on what needs to be done to improve Canada's human rights compliance on or shortly after May 19.

The Canadian government's 4th and 5th Periodic Reports and the submissions of Canadian non-governmental organizations can be found on the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights web site at: http://www.ohchr.org/english/bodies/cescr/cescrs36.htm

Sara and Bill They were both AIDS positive. I had seen her only once before, he was a regular at the small free lunch cafe where I did my counselling sessions as they had lunch. Sara and Bill (not their real names) chatted closely the previous day, I marvelled how despite their obvious advanced illness and their desperate situations they flirted coyly with the same innocence as anyone else.

I'd not be able to say how old they were, after years of living homeless and addicted twenty five often looked like forty or fifty, most of them were barely past childhood when discarded by society and family. In each other they found interest and affection, the place was of no consequence and their troubles fell off. Instinctively we all gave them space, no one tried striking up a conversation or asking for anything. Bill cleared the table and brought Sara another coffee.

Afterwards each went their own way. There is a territoriality and work ethic in this population, begging or sex trade it is still work and attending clinics, hoop jumping for services and counselling, standing in line for methadone. It is foolish to think this does not require some self discipline. These were not things that could be done together.

They were both back. Sara had come first, she glanced around for him. She bit her lower lip, deep in thought, hoping, not eating. Finally, Bill turned up. His face flushed when he saw her. She stood up to wait in line beside him then they took a table outside. I had just sat outside to have a smoke and talk with another client. Bill asked me for my lighter. The triumphantly he took out the stump of a candle (origins unimportant). With great ceremony he arranged the table, and put away the trays. He placed the lit candle-stump on the table and they sat, holding hands, and eating lunch. For just a few moments, they were human, their lives mattered to each other.

for more in this vein: http:aletta.org/poorindex.shtml

I will be posting portraits, with names changed, of several people I came to know, the poorest among us, and whose stories need telling. This is the first of several his name is "Shoeshine".

Shoeshine He was slight, skin tightly wrapped around his bones. We stood eye to eye, but somehow he carried himself as a taller man. The others called him shoeshine, simply because that is what he did. He made his living shining shoes. He took great pride in his work. with great enthusiasm he would take away my shoes and shine them and he was disappointed if I cam in wearing sandals. Shoeshine himself was wearing an old shoe on one food tied with strips of cloth, his foot so swollen from and infection. It made him limp, but with some almost Gene Kelly-like smoothness he made the limp look like a cavalier swagger. Like most people too thin from illness he could not easily stay warm. Despite all this he had class and a unique style.

He earned his keep shining shoes, he did not take handouts. He had a daughter somewhere, and a ex-wife he was still deeply in love with. He'd blown it. Daddies should not be drug addicts if they want to be daddies. it was a lesson he learned just a bit late. His addiction was now terminal. He had already entered the full-blow AIDS stage and he was weary. He knew it. He resisted being put on the AIDS cocktail, it was too expensive, getting it subsidised was complicated by his not being in the system for it. Nonetheless we wore him down.

For a brief time, after the projectile vomiting stopped, he felt better. Old wounds from rat bites were starting to clear up without the prolonged eruptions. Yes, rat bites. he could only afford a room in a local hotel and they had rats. I believed it that he did not notice when he was still on drugs, but he was noticing now. This was not how and where he wanted to die. I explained hospice to him. He was delighted, said he had never heard of it before. He dedicated himself fully to earning enough to pay in advance for his hospice, so he could die in dignity on clean sheets.

Then quickly his health declined yet again. He was in and out of delusion. One afternoon we were sitting in the courtyard swapping stories of when we were "young". Out of nowhere he started to giggle, the laugh lines around his eyes crinkled. "What?", I asked. He explained that I had two really cute little pink squirrels playing on my shoulders. Pink ones, mind you. That told me he was at peace.

He noticed I was a bit down. I told him I could not afford a gift for my daughter's birthday. He acknowledged my pain, and then was back watching the squirrels at play.

A few days later shoeshine presented me with a gift certificate with a hairdresser for my daughter. One of his steady clients was hairdresser. After he assured me it had cost him nothing, I hugged him with heartfelt gratitude. I told him that his daughter was missing something not having him in her life, and I meant it.

I visited him once in hospital when he had a bout of pneumonia. He'd held back a pack of menthols for me. He could appreciate the concept of having nothing. He made it a mission to tell me exactly how to survive, he told me all that social workers were mandated not to. I met his mother at the hospital, a lovely woman. I think had shoeshine not contracted AIDS he could have put his life back together. Unfortunately when quite young, this young man had been to ill to work in any meaningful jobs because he repeatedly had cancer. He became angry, married, could not deal with the anger and threw it away when he tried numbing himself with drugs and then on top of it contracted AIDS.

Then I became too ill to work there anymore and sat a for the last time with shoeshine. I gave him my number but suspected he would not call. Happily he did not need me, he was ok.

I still think he might have lived longer if hospice was simply made available to him. The drug cocktail might have had a better chance if he was not so overworked and stressed. All the same, he died not much later, in hospice, on clean sheets. Shoeshine was not nobody, he was my good friend.