Emergency mental health care is covered in Canada if you're hospitalized (e.g. arrested, suicidal, etc). However once you're stabilized and out of the hospital, you're on your own. Seems to me it would be better to treat people before a crisis situation and avoid the hospital entirely but that goes for the entire health care system doesn't it?
Fair enough - that is the one scenario which you technically get free mental health care. More so for practical reasons.
Preventative measures are of course better, less costly and make sense. No argument there.
But I feel that mental health support also has "first aid" aspects to it as well, and not purely preventative.
It is interesting to see how "Universal healthcare" isn't actually universal. Granted, such a system that covers every possible medical issue would be prohibitively expensive. But it's interesting to see how wide swaths are sometimes excluded, such as in Canada where mental health, and until recently, dental care is excluded from socialized Medicare.