Mental Health: Committing Crimes to Get Care

BETTING À DAY

Being charged and sentenced in court for the chance to get mental health care is the reality that Me Catherine Lapointe, a legal aid lawyer who specializes in defending people with mental health issues, is hurt every day. 

“It doesn't make sense that my clients, 'the lucky ones', they have committed crimes, but they will have the right to mental health care and 'the luckiest ones', the most unstable ones, will go to the Philippe-Pinel Institute”, exclaimed the lawyer to Stéphan Bureau, on the set of the program “Le monde à l’envers”, Friday evening.

Me Lapointe also deplored the haste of hospitals to send home unstabilized patients, or even downright still in psychosis. A worrying problem according to the psychiatrist at the Philippe-Pinel Institute, Gilles Chamberland, who participated in the premise of this discussion, and who also underlined the importance of stabilizing patients before discharging them.

>

“We are in too much of a hurry to send them home,” said the lawyer, adding in passing the lack of means, manpower and resources on the ground.

“The bureaucracy, that discourages us a lot. But we are lucky in Montreal to have community organizations, fortunately we have them! [The organized system] no longer meets the needs for a long time,” she recalled.

The lady also called on the government and the legislator to pay serious attention to this scourge, which, with the pandemic, is exacerbated. “We are on the eve of knowing worse than what we are currently seeing,” she advised.

Me Catherine Lapointe is participating in particular in the new RDI documentary series “In my defense”.

Hugh Grant's malaise as seen by Sébastien Benoit 

Sébastien Benoit, the guest of the week, spent the evening on the set surrounded by Biz panellists, Sophie Durocher, Richard Martineau and Yasmine Abdelfadel.

The host went over a few of his red carpet covers, when he was a reporter for the show “Flash”, in the late 1990s. Among other things, he deplored the unpleasant and condescending attitude of actor Hugh Grant at the last awards ceremony. Oscars, while the latter responded in a very succinct, even nonchalant way, to his interlocutor Ashley Graham.

“The upside down world” is broadcast live every Friday at 8 p.m. on TVA .