Making mental health a priority
CHEO’s new Chief of Psychiatry assessing level of care
Children and youth are some of the most vulnerable to mental illness, particularly with the growth of the online world. Dr. Kathleen Pajer is no stranger to this new digital world, with her research on the increase of self-harm among teenage girls. She attributes part of this increase to our online era, and children and youth being constantly exposed to their sometimes abusive peers through social media.
Taking over as Chief of Psychiatry at CHEO only six months ago, Dr. Kathleen Pajer has been leading CHEO’s mental health team through a strategic review of its programs, which provide therapy, counselling, in-patient and outpatient treatment for major mental illnesses, eating disorders, selfharm, depression and anxiety, in addition to outreach in school programs. Dr. Pajer wants to make sure that children and youth get the mental health care that they need when they need it, as well as making sure that medical aspects of a patient’s mental health treatment are the best they can be.
With the focus on child and youth mental health over the past several years, CHEO has seen a dramatic increase in the number of kids seeking help. In CHEO’s Emergency room, there’s been an unprecedented 78 per cent increase in children and youth with mental health issues in the past five years. These statistics are mirrored in hospitals across Canada. With a system unprepared for such a sudden increase, professionals are working overtime to accommodate the growing need for mental health resources in eastern Ontario.
Despite CHEO’s best efforts, the current wait time is about one year to get an appointment for outpatient treatment — far too long, says Dr. Pajer, for an age group that is constantly changing and developing. By the time a child gets an appointment, their needs may have changed and there may be a further wait for the appropriate treatment or program. To combat this problem, Dr. Pajer has made reducing wait-lists one of her top priorities.
Also on Dr. Pajer’s list is to tap into the most up-to date research and approaches and ensure that doctors and therapists are trained in new treatments. This expands the number of treatment options available to patients and families. An example is Dialectical Behaviour Therapy (DBT), an approach that CHEO’s team has uniquely adapted to work with some of the most at risk youth and their family members. Providing CHEO’s clinicians with more training and resources will make a large stride towards better accommodating struggling youth and their families.
Community support is critical to CHEO’s mission of helping kids and families be their healthiest. For example, donations help CHEO to discover new screening tools, including a made-at-CHEO clinical assessment tool for physicians in the Emergency room to more quickly and consistently treat youth in crisis. Community support also drives innovative research in eating disorders and contributes to important programs for youth mental health, including CHEO’s internationally recognized Youth Net/Réseau Ado.
“You cannot improve mental health in a population without the community being involved,” says Dr. Pajer. To keep this momentum going, CHEO relies on support from the community and families, as well as donors and advocates for mental health research; without that support, meaningful change cannot happen.
What CHEO can do, Dr. Pajer says, is to share our knowledge with parents, teachers, community mental health agencies, and primary care providers, so that many children and youth are helped before they end up in the Emergency department.
You cannot improve mental health in a population without the community being involved. DR. KATHLEEN PAJER, CHEO Chief of Psychiatry