As many champions of Canadian Medicare are celebrating the Supreme Court decision, I hope we don’t forget that the promise of Medicare for Canadians with Mental Illness has been broken for a long time.

Our healthcare system will never fulfil its promise when people are waiting years for the treatment they need. As a psychiatrist I should never have to direct people to private therapy, but sometimes that is the only way to access evidence based care in their community.

Yes, we have a lot to proud of. But frankly, we have a lot to be ashamed of as well. We continue to ignore the persistent and intentional underfunding of mental health and addictions infrastructure while our fellow Canadians suffer and some of them die.

Today is #WorldSuicidePreventionDay which is a poignant reminder of the human cost of inaction. How many more hashtags will it take to get our governments to wake up to the problem? How many more politically convenient photo ops before we finally see sustainable investments?

I would add that #mentalhealth is not a partisan issue. We need all politicians to set aside differences and work together to find sustainable funding. If we can pay for ER visits when people are in crisis, why wouldn’t we pay for evidence based psychotherapy?