In recent years, initiatives and events like Bell Let’s Talk Day, Project Semicolon, and CMHA’s Ride Don’t Hide have brought mental health discussions to mainstream media and have helped to reduce the stigma associated with mental health issues. However more open conversations about mental health does not necessarily mean that mental health care services are more accessible or that there are enough of these services to meet demands. Previous research has shown that while 4.5-10.9% of Canadians over the age of 15 have experienced at least one mental health disorder annually, fewer than 40% seek medical care for their mental health issue (Ngamini Ngui & Vanasse, 2012). Reasons for not accessing care vary from distance (travel time and transportation availability), socioeconomic factors (financial ability to pay for services, awareness of available services), and availability of services (Ngamini Ngui & Vanasse, 2012).
The goal of this project was to assess the accessibility of mental health care services in Vancouver, BC. Originally, I had planned to assess Vancouver, Burnaby, New Westminster, and Richmond but the length of time ArcMap required to run part of the analysis made this unfeasible so my scope was narrowed to only Vancouver.
Figure 1: Study area