Kristin Pardy hid her bulimia for more than 10 years. When she finally mustered the courage to go to her local clinic in Cartwright — a community of about 400 people in southern Labrador — and share her "secret," the nurses were "amazing" and got her a referral to an outpatient eating disorders program in St. John's.
But St. John's is about 1,400 km away, and as a working mom, ”I couldn't leave my kids for that long. I definitely couldn't leave my job for that long," Pardy said.
"Because it was going to be an outpatient program, I would still have to pay to find accommodations for the six to eight weeks that I was there. I'd still have to pay my bills while I was there. I'd still have to feed myself while I was there," the 38-year-old paramedic said in an interview by phone.
”(With) the financial barriers and the logistical geographical barriers of the only treatment available to me, I just, I couldn't do it," said Pardy, who is a member of Nunatukavut, the southern Labrador Inuit population. Inability to get needed mental health care is a reality facing many people in this country, according to The State of Mental Health in Canada 2024, a report released Tuesday by the Canadian Mental Health Association. The report says 2.
5 million people can't get the care they need, citing a variety of reasons, from unavailability of services to the out-of-pocket costs of seeing many mental health professionals whose services aren't publicly funded. It says 57 per cent of young peo.