New help to battle depression
Health minister touts new mental health spending at appearance in Peterborough
There’s a new program in Peterborough to help people with anxiety and depression, thanks to funding from the provincial government.
In its 2018 budget tabled last week, the province announced $2.1 billion in new spending on mental health services.
That’s going to mean enhanced services in Peterborough. On Wednesday, two provincial politicians held a press conference at the local branch of the Canadian Mental Health Association (CMHA) to discuss it.
Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs Minister Jeff Leal (the MPP for Peterborough) and Health and Long-Term Care Minister Helena Jaczek both spoke.
The province already has good mentalhealth services, Jaczek said.
“But too many people are struggling to navigate the system to get the help they need,” she said.
It should be easier to get access to mental health services, she said, when a patient asks for help from a doctor.
To that end, there’s now a new service available locally to help people with mild to moderate anxiety or depression: it’s expected to help 200 people over the next year or so.
The program is offered through the Peterborough Family Health Team, which is the network that includes all family doctors.
Lori Richey, executive director of the Family Health Team, said two mental health clinicians are being provided by Ontario Shores Centre for Mental Health Sciences in Whitby.
They will be offer psychotherapy to Peterborough patients for the next 18 months, Richey said. They offer 12 to 18 sessions to patients who are referred through their family doctor or nurse practitioner.
Richey said the clinicians follow a protocol for every session, and that referrals are being taken now.
She also said the two mental health clinicians from Ontario Shores come in addition to 15 that already work for the Family Health Team.
There are other newly funded services coming to Peterborough as well: each high school in the city will have access to an additional mental health worker, for instance, and there are plans for 52 more units of supportive housing in 2017-18 for those at risk of eviction over mental health issues.
Leal and Jaczek sat on a committee together in 2009 to recommend ways to improve mental healthcare in Ontario, and he said the spending is the “finalization” of that work.
He thinks they’re critical projects that must be implemented.
“We can’t risk these initiatives on June 7,” Leal said, referring to the provincial election.
Ontario Progressive Conservative leader Doug Ford hasn’t proposed any specific policies yet, but the National Post reported in March he plans to cut about four per cent of the province’s budget (roughly $5.6 billion).
Ford hasn’t said exactly where he will make cuts, The Post reported, but he’s said he plans a “line-by-line” analysis of the budget.
Jaczek, who is the former medical officer of health for York Region, said this is no time for cutting back on mental health services.
“It is a time for more care.”