Summary of Recommendations
Report of the C.M. Hinks Institute, February 1993
Republished with permission
Welcome: Freda Martin
Full document includes:
The Honourable Perrin Beatty "Entertaining Ourselves to Death"
II. The Stakeholders: The Industry's View
The Process - Standards and Practices
Al Waxman: "An Actor/Director's Perspective"
III. The Community's View
The Community's View, Continued
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It's my pleasure on behalf of the C.M. Hincks Institute to open this conference this morning. I'd like to spend one or two moments just setting the scene from our point of view. The Institute's mission is to be a national resource in the area of children's emotional health and development. Any of you who happened to read The Globe & Mail this morning will have been as surprised as I was to find that overnight, we have become a subsidiary of the CRTC. We are, in fact, a free standing institution closely affiliated with our sister organization, The C.M. Hincks Treatment Centre.
Many of you will know that in 1986 a survey told us that one in six of all school children in Ontario, and by extrapolation across the country, suffer from a clear diagnosable emotional disorder. A second more recent study shows a slightly higher incidence, 22% of 3-year-olds, giving serious concern on account of aggressive behaviour. These same children identified at age 3 were found to be the ones presenting problems when they started school. And so the cycle of disadvantage, all too familiar, begins. I think you will readily see that with incident rates of 20%, we have essentially a public health problem and, therefore, a need to be concerned with environments. In this area - as a country - we are neglectful. It can be said, in fact, that in the domain of emotional health, we have a public health system similar to that which existed in relation to physical health at the turn of the century. I mean that emotionally we don't pasteurize the milk, we don't purify the water, and we don't innoculate for contagious diseases.
Its our conviction at the Institute that to begin to effectively address these issues, so important for the long term quality of life and economic productivity of our country. We have to go beyond the more usual case by case treatment methods employed by traditional mental health professionals, and focus on making children's environments positive and healthy. This is important for all children, but absolutely crucial for the most vulnerable ones, and television is surely one potent environment, although not, of course, the only one. Studies show that many children watch a minimum of three to four hours daily and, in fact, by the time they are eighteen, most will have spent more time watching television than doing any other single activity except sleeping. So we're very pleased indeed to have this opportunity to bring all of you together; the important players in the field; the people with the knowledge; with the power; with the concern. Our hope is that together, over the next day and a half, we can spend time in creative sharing and brainstorming, our common goal being to find solutions to develop an action plan which will go some way to effectively ensuring that destructive affects are minimized and positive creative potential, enhanced.
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