I don't want to downplay anything you've said because I think you're pretty much on the mark.
>> I was able to social engineer myself into being a 'visitor' at a hospital for the past week
> Not exactly legal or ethical. Obviously, they're facing dire circumstances, which might mitigate their culpability, but would you want to hire someone who uses social engineering to deceive people?
This is an unfortunate reality in Canada, especially in places where it gets cold enough to freeze to death during the winter (which most of Alberta would qualify for). Homeless shelters are full, the wait lists for social support, mental health support, and addiction support are long*, and hospitals are warm, publicly owned, and honestly so long as you're not making a nuisance of yourself they're probably not the worst place to hang out. There's usually public cafeterias and lots of seating throughout. Sleeping there would probably be a problem.
> bad experience with treatment and are not currently in treatment
This is another one of the oddities of the Canadian healthcare system. There's a few different categories of mental health support:
- Social services is free but often there isn't a whole lot they can help with. Employment Insurance (EI) has a pretty heavy paperwork burden and also requires you to have been employed recently and only lasts for a limited amount of time. Long-term disability has a lot of strings attached. If you do manage to find gainful income they take away your financial support 1:1; a woman I know went blind due to cancer when she was a teenager and was living in an apartment provided by social housing. She started making beaded jewelry and selling it at the farmer's market. Over a period of a year she managed to save up $500 to buy herself an iPad, which apparently has excellent accessibility features for blind users. When her social worker came by and saw it she threatened to deduct $500 off of the next disability cheque.
- There are psychiatrists available, for free, through the public healthcare system. They're by referral only and a referral must come from a GP. 20% of Canadians do not currently have a family doctor (~6M people) so their only access to psychiatric help is to convince a doctor at a walk-in clinic to make a referral. In most cases it's going to be months before you hear back. There are occasionally walk-in clinics that do have on-site psychiatrists but it's exceptionally rare.
- Psychologists and therapists are not covered by the public health system. Some do offer reduced rates for low-income patients but you're generally looking at somewhere in the $80-120/hr range. Like OP mentioned about astrology, there isn't a whole lot of quality control around this... you basically have to go interview them (and likely pay for the privilege) and make your own decision on whether or not you think they'll be someone you want to give more money to.
As an additional wrinkle, while healthcare is nominally free, prescription medication is not (although there was a big announcement around this yesterday, so that may be changing). Even if OP did manage to get an appointment with a psychiatrist and get an assessment and a prescription... how the heck are they going to pay for it? There are generally programs in place to provide medication discounts for low-income people but... again, paperwork burden and long turn-around times.
The brutal question that comes up on a pretty regular basis is: what do we do about people like OP? While we, in theory, have more humanity than just letting them freeze to death in the streets, we also do a piss-poor job at helping them get out of the situation they're in.
* Basically the only way to get seen by someone reasonably quickly is to tell them you're suicidal, but that'll probably result in an involuntary hold for a while.