Victor Camille Lebouthillier Says Health Care Must Move to a Prevention Model

Kelowna, Canada, May 24, 2017 --(PR.com)-- Alive for Wellness Clinical Director, Victor Camille Lebouthillier, said in a press interview on May 10th that most people with a mental health struggle are not receiving proper treatment and that this is resulting in a higher cost to managing mental health disorders.

An ounce of prevention is certainly worth a pound of cure when it comes to mental illness, said Victor Camille Lebouthillier. Mental illness frequently begins with stress, which contributes to the development of small bouts of mental health struggles. These, in turn, can lead to mental illness that can be complicated with addiction and incarceration. Providing support early in this process is critical and less costly. Unfortunately, Canadian and most other Western health care systems deal with mental illness by emphasizing a disease management model, rather than a disease prevention model.

Lebouthillier further stated that a person’s psychological functions are similar to their physical body’s functions in that consistent levels of self-care are needed to ward off illness. The challenge facing most of us is that a majority of people have not had any training towards applying self-care skills towards their psychological functions. Such skills include things like creating healthier thought processes and managing emotions and desires effectively. Alternatively, people who demonstrate psychological resilience likely learned these necessary skills as children from their parents modeling these behaviors. This allowed them to enter their adult years with strong resilience, which has helped them to deal with life challenges and keep stress controllable.

A Disease Prevention Model:
We are beginning to see early adopters in grade school systems like those found in Medicine Hat, Alberta and Victoria, British Columbia. School boards in these areas have issued mandates to teach children how to gain awareness of their psychological functions and how to manage them optimally. Therapists go into the schools and work with teachers, parents and students to build resilience and emotional intelligence. Although this model should be applauded, LeBouthillier said that such prevention models will need to move more quickly, if we are to stop the mental health epidemic. 1 in 5 people are currently struggling with a mental health issue. This number is growing. This mental health crisis is costing the Canadian economy 50 billion dollars per year, according to a recent Canadian Mental Health Commission study.

Vic LeBouthillier and his team provide mental health recovery programs at the Alive Wellness Centre in Kelowna, BC, Canada, as well as online prevention and recovery programs to employees of large corporations. The challenge, LeBouthiller said, is that smaller business and lower income people cannot afford this type of training. To serve this segment, LeBouthillier’s team have created the Resilient Mind Program, which is focused on making education, training, and support more affordable and accessible to all. The Resilient Mind Program is for ages 16 years and older and provides 2-hrs per week of interactive group training for six weeks in a business or any other type of community centre.

The average person has had no training on how to build resilience, mostly because a decade ago the consensus was that mental health was hard-wired and, like the color of your eyes, not able to change. However, today a widespread shift in that view has occurred. The consensus is not that our brains are not hard-wired, but, instead, that they are neuroplastic and capable of change.

To learn more about these programs and products visit the websites http://www.aliveforwellness.com and http://www.viclebouthillier.com