North in desperate need of more child psychiatrists

Saskatchewan’s “gateway to the north” has no more working child psychiatrists, sparking concerns about patient care in a region that already struggles to access timely mental health services.

Prince Albert — and the province’s north — lost its only two psychiatrists trained to treat children and youth in the past year after

Dr. Mohammed Hussain died of a heart attack in October at age 79. Another psychiatrist announced he would retire this year.

“Going back we had had adult psychiatrists and some of them would do children and youth as well, but we didn’t have anyone with that special designation now,” family physician Dr. Stan Oleksinski said.

A shortage of psychiatrists in

Saskatchewan is nothing new. A 2020 Globe and Mail analysis found Saskatchewan had only 9.3 psychiatrists per 100,000 people, the second-lowest among provinces. There are presently 13 openings for psychiatrists across the province, as posted to the Saskdocs web page.

It’s especially hard to recruit psychiatrists trained to work with youth. In 2018, there were only 16 such professionals in the entire province. Hussain was considered a rarity, Oleksinski said, because he actually returned to school at 69 years old to pursue more training in the field.

“Losing him was very devastating for the mental health community and Prince Albert,” Prince-albert Northcote MLA Nicole Rancourt said.

Before entering office, Rancourt worked in the community as a counsellor and social worker primarily working with youth.

She says she collaborated with Hussain for around a decade and that he was known as someone who would happily take on the most difficult cases in the community. Hussain “went above and beyond” a normal psychiatrist’s workload, Rancourt added.

One of Hussain’s former colleagues, Dr. James Holmlund, also announced this year that he would retire.

Rancourt says Prince Albert serves as a “hub” for a large part of the province’s north, where a series of reports over the past decade have frequently flagged issues accessing timely mental health support. She’s worried the loss of the two professionals will mean even more barriers in accessing mental health care, since families might have to travel as far as Saskatoon to see a psychiatrist.

Community members say mental health workers of all kinds are needed but that psychiatrists are especially important because they can prescribe and manage medications for conditions like substance use disorders.

An attempt and request to interview the local head of psychiatry was not successful.

A 2018 provincial auditor’s report on the region found that 80 per cent of child and youth patients with mild to moderate illness waited more than 20 days to access services in the former Prince Albert-parkland Health Region during a period when there were two child psychiatrists on staff.

The government’s 2014 mental health and addictions plan and a 2017 report on youth suicide from the office of the Advocate for Children and Youth have detailed the concerning rates of addiction, depression and suicide among youth in the north.

Rancourt says the city’s northern location and high caseload add an extra barrier to recruiting physicians.

“We don’t get many psychiatrists, and when we do we might lose them quickly to other centres,” she said.