The North Shore Schizophrenia Society has been in the forefront of defending provisions in our legislation that do allow for such help. Members of the NSSS, knowing from first-hand experience the tragedy of leaving the seriously mentally ill untreated to deteriorate on the streets, have been among those most active in these advocacy efforts.

Fortunately, as it happens, British Columbia has relatively good legislation for helping those with mental disorders. The B.C. Mental Health Act is based on medical need ("the need for care and supervision," as it is worded in the act) and provides for involuntary committal where appropriate, after careful assessment. There are also checks and balances, most particularly review panels, to prevent abuses.

In the last few decades of the 20th century, however, an anti-treatment lobby surfaced. It began in the United States and then spilled over into Canada, notably Ontario. It was based on the false notion that involuntary committal was, in effect, a conspiracy against people's rights when, in fact, by freeing those suffering from schizophrenia and other serious mental illness from their psychoses, it returned their humanity to them. The anti-treatment lobby, nevertheless, to justify itself, simply denied the reality of serious mental illness.

The whole sordid and tragic story of the havoc they wreaked, with the seriously mentally ill as their victims, is told in a 1990 book entitled Madness in the Streets, by American authors Rael Jean Isaac and Virginia Armat.

This is where the B.C. Schizophrenia Society came in. It fought incipient efforts to undermine the B.C. Mental Health Act during a review of the legislation in 1992. BCSS North Shore (now the North Shore Schizophrenia Society) was represented on the provincial society's fledgling Advocacy Committee that drafted its original pro-active treatment document, Response to the Discussion Paper on Mental Health Legislation, submitted to the provincial government for the occasion. At the same time, the Branch, for lack of a concise readable leaflet explaining the need for treatment, drafted one itself, entitled simply Mental Health Act Review . Because it put the case for a realistic appreciation of the realities of mental illness so cogently, it later came to be known as the Manifesto. It was widely circulated and cited.

NSSS members also played a key role in ensuring that, for the seriously mentally ill, the Mental Health Act took precedence over new guardianship legislation that would have placed inappropriate administrative and legal obstacles in the way of timely treatment. We similarly were active in supporting "Bill 22," an amendment to the Mental Health Act, which made the Act more explicitly pro-treatment for people in serious decline ("to prevent substantial mental or physical deterioration" is the relevant wording).

Two other areas of legislative and government advocacy, led by the B.C. Schizophrenia Society, also deserve to be noted. The first is the defence of Riverview Hospital or, in more general terms, of a tertiary hospital facility in the Lower Mainland with the specialization and expertise that Riverview has provided for the mentally ill, especially the most difficult cases. This has included a defence of the unique Riverview grounds.

The second additional area is advocacy for adequate spending on treatment and services for the severely mentally ill - sufficient acute care beds, outpatient services, rehabilitation and housing. The NSSS, as well as speaking to the issue directly, buttresses mental health spending by its educational work and its sheer presence, taking schizophrenia out of the closet and helping the public to appreciate the needs of the seriously mentally ill.

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