Recovery home boosts Sudbury mental health supports

A new recovery home is opening its doors to mental health patients in Sudbury this fall.

The eight-person house will provide temporary accommodation for those patients who are moving from the hospital to the community.

That's the kind of transition support that the executive director of the Social Planning Council of Sudbury said is needed to help people stay off the streets.

Janet Gasparini said the provincial government closed down several mental health institutions about 30 years ago with an eye to integrating people into the community with certain supports in place.

"And if you look back at the history of that move and what happened to the resources around that move the resources never actually moved into community to the extent that they were being spent on institutions," she said.

"So the money went somewhere else. So, while we have many excellent supports in the community, we certainly dont have enough."

Gasparini said, according to one Social Planning Council study, close to 50 per cent of the homeless people surveyed sufferedfrom mental illness.

Canadian Mental Health currently supports about 300 hundred people with housing needs.