Vision for mental-health centre takes shape
$50M Calgary facility designed to offer timely support for children, adolescents
Until now, a mentalhealth crisis for Sue Washington’s daughter meant a trip to the busy emergency room at the Alberta Children’s Hospital.
Three years from now, she’s hoping parents like herself will be able to turn to a dedicated children’s mental-health centre to seek treatment for their kids.
Alberta Health Services and the Alberta Children’s Hospital Foundation unveiled their vision for such a facility Thursday, releasing architectural renderings of the Calgary Centre for Child and Adolescent Mental Health they plan to open by fall 2021.
“We’ve been to the emergency room more times than I can count. My daughter has been a patient in almost every in-patient facility we have here in Calgary. There’s huge wait lists, there’s several days spent in emergency waiting to get a bed, waiting to get a spot,” said Washington, whose daughter has received treatment for mental-health-related issues for the past five years.
“With this new building, people will learn very quickly that there is a place to go. There is somebody who can help you,” she said. “Our city needs this so badly.” First announced in May, the centre’s purpose will be to ensure timely access to appropriate mental-health supports for children and teens. It’ll provide three distinct services, including a walk-in clinic for those in crisis, appointment-based treatment supports, and a day hospital program designed for children and families transitioning from inpatient mental-health care back to the community.
“All the services are brand new, so these aren’t existent service within our continuum of mental health. We really looked at where we felt the biggest needs were,” said Ryan Clements, the program manager for the new centre.
“We know one in five Canadians are going to experience a mentalhealth issue in their lifetime and most of these issues emerge during childhood and adolescence, so if we can start addressing mentalhealth issues early on, I think our ability to support families and hopefully shift that trajectory makes a big difference.”
The entire cost of building the centre will be supported through donations.
The Alberta Children’s Hospital Foundation aims to raise $50 million to fund its construction, along with program and research enhancements. They ’re still in the early days of that campaign, president and CEO Saifa Koonar said.
The three-storey, 3,200-squaremetre building would be developed on vacant AHS land in the northwest community of Hounsfield Heights. It’ll provide kids with direct access to a playground to ensure a more friendly “home” feeling, compared to being “stuck in a hospital,” according to architect Lee Miller.
Dr. Chris Wilkes, a child and adolescent psychiatrist at the children’s hospital, said proper mental-health care is not a question of getting the right medication, but one of getting the right counselling. People need the right place to get the help they require, he said.
“Children and adolescents will often have difficulties but only 25 per cent of those children will actually pursue professional help,” Wilkes said. “We know there’s an unmet need and we know that over the last 10 years, there’s been a 60 per cent increase in emergency room visits for children and youth for mental health.
“The mental-health issue is continuing to increase, and so the issue is how to provide timely support.”
In-patient admissions for adolescents struggling with mentalhealth issues have increased 130 per cent over the past decade, according to data from Alberta Health Services. In 2017, the Alberta Children’s Hospital reported 395 mental-health admissions, while other Calgary hospitals combined admitted an additional 1,100 adolescents for the same reason.
Wilkes said emotional maturation takes longer than it used to, often leading to more mental-health issues for teens and young adults.
“What we’ve seen is that the new 18 is now 28,” he said. “Parenting is often being replaced by the digital age and now there’s an increase in the availability of drugs as well. There’s a lot of stresses on children and adolescents, and life keeps changing at a rapid rate.”
Nationwide, admission rates for adolescents with mental-health issues have increased by about 50 per cent over the past decade, according to AHS.
“There’s a lot of misconceptions that children can’t have a mentalhealth problem because they’re young and it’s a time of minimal stress,” Wilkes said. “But in actual fact, children are more sensitive to stress, more sensitive than adults.”