A large part of “mental illness” is depression (see article below).
Mercury is a neuro-toxin, it causes depression. (Dentists have the highest suicide rate among the professions.)
Health insurers, employers and workers are alarmed by COSTS of mental illness. From June 28 article below:
- “The steady rise of disability claims related to mental illness in Canada’s public service continued last year and accounted for a historic 48 per cent of all claims filed.”
- “. . the same problems with absenteeism exist in the private sector — where mental health claims are predicted to hit 50 per cent of all claims by 2014.”
Please see 2012-07-07 Mercury Fillings, Letter sent to Health Insurance – – interest in reducing incidence of mental illness.
Feel free to copy, paste and make changes to the letter I sent to the companies named in the following article. There are many more letters that could be sent! Awareness is key to finding solutions.
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Mental illness claims continue to rise in federal public service
By Kathryn May, Postmedia News
OTTAWA — The steady rise of disability claims related to mental illness in Canada’s public service continued last year and accounted for a historic 48 per cent of all claims filed.
The grim tally was to be presented to this week’s annual meeting of the Disability Insurance Plan’s Board of Management, which was cancelled unexpectedly.
The report comes at a time when the public service’s soaring absenteeism rates and disability claims are under the spotlight as Treasury Board wraps up a three-year disability management initiative and contemplates how to overhaul a 45-year-old sick leave and disability insurance plan to get sick and injured workers back on the job faster and healthier.
On any given day, 19,000 public servants are booked off work on some kind of sick leave. Federal employees were absent 12.5 days last year — twice the average rate of employees in the private sector. In the core public service, however, workers are off 18 days a year, when you include paid and unpaid sick leave, workers’ compensation and disability.
Public servants get 15 days of sick leave a year, which they can accumulate and carry over year to year. The value of all banked sick leave is pegged at about $5 billion.
For the first time in years, the number of overall claims filed by public servants in 2011 dipped slightly to 3,790. The reasons are unclear but the size of the public service has shrunk with the government’s spending cuts and some speculate that some workers, worried about losing their jobs in a looming downsizing, were afraid to take time off for illness.
In the months leading up to the Conservatives’ March budget, departments also were more aggressive in getting ill or injured employees back to work so they knew what jobs they had vacant when it came to managing the $5.2 billion in spending cuts and the 19,200 jobs that have to go.
The incidence of disability claims per 1,000 members also dipped slightly to 15.82 compared to more than 16 the year earlier. The incidence rate has risen about 35 per cent since 2,000. At last count, about 11,000 public servants were collecting disability benefits.
But the most worrisome statistic is that mental health conditions, led by depression and anxiety, are now responsible for 48 per cent of all approved claims. That is the highest percentage since the plan was created 45 years ago.
Twenty years ago, mental health conditions accounted for 23.7 per cent of approved claims and have been rising ever since. They have represented more than 40 per cent of all claims cent since 1997.
Here’s how those mental health claims broke down:
– 23 per cent of all claims are for depression;
– 6.4 per cent are for recurrent depressive disorder;
– 4.7 per cent are for adjustment disorder caused by grief or separation;
– 4.1 per cent are for anxiety;
– 2.1 per cent are for bipolar disorder;
– 1.8 per cent are for post-traumatic stress disorder.
– 5.9 per cent include acute stress reaction, chronic fatigue syndrome, obsessive-compulsive disorder, panic disorder, schizophrenia, bulimia, anorexia, dementia phobias and illness-related drug and alcohol use.
Nearly 70 per cent of the claims for mental health conditions have been filed by women, a percentage that has been relatively steady since 2005. Experts offer many reasons why women account for a higher percentage of the claims.
Bill Wilkerson, cofounder of the Global Business and Economic Roundtable on Addiction and Mental Health, said women are diagnosed with depression four times as often as men — but men are four times more likely to take their own lives due to depression. Women are more liable to seek professional help than men and they carry the burden and conflict of “role overload” in juggling demands of work, home, child and elder care.
The disability plan, administered by Sun Life, has 241,785 members and paid $256 million in benefits to the 11,100 public servants who are on disability. The plan’s reserves now stand at $1.7 billion and annual premiums — mostly paid by government — are $301 million.
The management board overseeing the disability insurance plan has long warned the plan, close to 45 years old, is so archaic that the benefits aren’t helping a growing number of sick and disabled public servants to get better and back to work.
The board has raised red flags about the design of the plan, its rising number of claims, and its governance; the plan hasn’t been updated or re-tendered since it was awarded to Sun Life in 1970. The board is comprised of union and government representatives and reports to Treasury Board.
It’s unclear how the government intends to revamp its sick leave and disability plan but many said it wants to replace accumulated sick leave with a short-term disability scheme. Treasury Board officials were supposed to brief the board on its next steps at the meeting that was cancelled at the last minute.
Wilkerson said the latest report is a “telltale sign” that the government’s existing sick leave and disability management system isn’t working in today’s epidemic of chronic and episodic illnesses. He’s a proponent of getting rid of banked sick leave but he said the plan has to be overhauled to put more emphasis on prevention, rehabilitation, wellness and disability case management to get the ill and injured back to work faster.
He chastised the government for “stigmatizing” its own workforce by allowing all the debate to focus on the large number of sick days public servants take off rather than getting to the bottom of what’s wrong with the workplace that’s making people sick.
Wilkerson said he worries the government is going to isolate sick leave as the main issue and “stigmatize” its own workers to get rid of it.
He said the same problems with absenteeism exist in the private sector — where mental health claims are predicted to hit 50 per cent of all claims by 2014.
The government’s disability management initiative was supposed to get a handle on some of these issues and lay the groundwork for a new system that promoted prevention, rehabilitation and getting people back to work.
Until now, Treasury Board has kept the unions in the loop about reforms and asked them to identify their biggest concerns about the way disability is managed in government.
The unions are reluctant partners because they fear a backlash from members, some of whom feel sick leave is an entitlement that they earn.
Public servants have few defenders these days. The government has tapped into public sentiment that sees the public service as too big and too inefficient, and its employees as overpaid and enjoying overly-generous benefits, as a way to cut spending and eliminate perks.
Union leaders know there are problems. They boiled their concerns down to six top priorities that were presented several weeks ago at a meeting of the National Joint Council.
At the top of the list was the growing number of mental health claims and a lack of services to get employees back to work.
Unions also reported that accumulated sick leave wasn’t working like it should. Young or new employees can’t bank enough sick leave to cover recurring or chronic illnesses. At same time, healthy, older workers who have backed months of leave may be entitled to use it as leave or holidays as they head toward retirement.
They also complained the long-term disability plan’s rehabilitation services are inadequate and take too long to get.
Disabled employees are treated inconsistently when pressed to return to work or resign from public service. They also don’t have a way to save for retirement and those who try to return to work and go on the priority list are sidelined by departments that don’t want to hire someone who has been sick.
The big question now is whether unions will continue to be part of any overhaul the government is planning.
The government has three types of disability: Workers’ Compensation for illness and injury related to the job; paid sick leave for non-work related injury; and long term disability.
All told, the government has four separate plans covering nearly 352,500 employees — a long term disability plan managed by Sun Life for unionized public servants and another run by Industrial Alliance for executives, judges, MPs, Senators and order-in-council appointees. Great West Life manages the RCMP’s disability plan and Manulife runs the military plan.
The government negotiates premiums with the insurers based on the expected and current costs of claims. Public servants kick in about 15 per cent of the premiums and the government pays the rest. The government pays 100 per cent of the premium for executives.