Province working to improve mental health supports: minister
Hearing about Kye Ball’s tragic death hit Health Minister Jim Reiter hard — professionally and personally.
“It breaks my heart,” Reiter said. “That’s just incredibly sad. I can’t imagine what that family is going through.”
The high number of suicides in Saskatchewan also troubles him.
“There’s probably almost no one who hasn’t been touched by this in some way,” Reiter said. “I’ve lost a nephew to suicide in the past and it’s incredibly difficult.”
He said the government must do its best to ensure adequate resources.
Reiter pointed to a number of different mental health initiatives underway in the province that include the Police and Crisis Team (PACT) in Regina and Saskatoon — a partnership that pairs a mental health professional with a police officer to provide a joint response to people experiencing a mental health crisis.
He’s hopeful the new targeted funding for home care and mental health the province and feds agreed to as part of the new 10year health accord in January will allow the provincial government to put more resources toward services.
Reiter vowed mental health issues will be top of mind for him in ongoing discussions with the federal government.
Responding to the Ball family’s concerns that the ministries of health and social services in particular failed Kye, Reiter noted a number of programs where the Ministry of Health works with other ministries such as Justice.
“More can always be done,” Reiter said. “With regard to the tragedy in La Loche, health and education have been doing a lot of work together that wasn’t probably being done in the past.
“I think there are a number of examples of where that’s being done. Do I think we can do better? Yeah, I do. I think that’s going to need to be a focus moving forward.”
Tobie Eberhardt, executive director with Child and Family Programs at the Ministry of Social Services, couldn’t speak to the Ball case specifically, but said the ministry works closely with its community partners and other ministries.
Social Services provides support and services to 16- and 17-year-old youths when the young person cannot live with his family for safety reasons or no parent is willing or able to take responsibility for the young person.
“We’d put in supports — counselling, mediation and if we’re not able to be successful in that — if it’s not safe for the youth or the youth and their family aren’t able to come to some kind of agreement, we would then look at residential options for that youth,” she said.
A case plan is developed based on the youth’s needs.
Because it’s a voluntary program, Social Services enters into an agreement with the youth “about what the services will be, what their case plan will be and what supports they might need, which would be where they would be residing,” Eberhardt said.
Services range from youths living in an approved room and board situation, peer homes or independent living.
Contact with a case worker is dependent on the needs of the youth.
Crisis response and mental health and addiction services have always been available in the rural area of the Regina Qu’Appelle Health Region (RQHR), said Fiona O’Connor, director of the region’s mental health clinic.
The Community Outreach and Support Team (COAST) is a crisis team that responds to a variety of calls, including mental health and addictions, which is staffed around the clock.
Social workers, registered psychiatric nurses and a couple of psychiatrists are on the COAST team. Although based in Regina, the team answers calls from rural areas. Following the tragedy in Indian Head, she said the region is providing more community supports and additional training for staff is underway.
Rural Mental Health is contacting youths in the community to offer services and extra mental health clinics are being held at Indian Head Union Hospital for any youths or families who wish to attend. Additionally, clinics have been offered at the local high school since Monday.
The region has already started or, in some cases, completed developing connections between local practitioners and psychiatrists and sharing best practice literature around suicide and youth mental health treatment and stabilization with them.
Rural Primary Health Care Services are working with mental health services to co-ordinate Applied Suicide Intervention Skills Training training for rural acute care staff and Mental Health First Aid for the primary health care team and community partners, O’Connor noted.
Mental health standards for acute care will be reviewed with the local team to determine the types of patients with a mental health diagnosis who can safely be managed in a rural acute care site.
Back in Regina, Dr. Oladipupo Akeju, acting department head of psychiatry with the RQHR, admitted mental health patients can face long waits in the emergency room.
Part of the problem is that patients’ physical health must be evaluated to determine if they’ve ingested any harmful substances before the psychiatrist is called in, he said.
How long patients wait also depends on how busy the psychiatrists are and the time of day.
During the day, a psychiatric nurse assesses patients and gathers information.
Currently, five child and 20 adult psychiatrists provide mental health services.
“We’re trying to recruit more — especially the child and adolescent psychiatrists,” Akeju said.
There are 10 beds on the adolescent psychiatric unit.
“Because there is a lot of pressure on those beds, there’s enough room there to add an additional three,” Akeju said. “The reason it’s just 10 is because of a staffing quota that they have. If they open it to 13, then they have to get additional staff.
“That happens fairly frequently ... 30 per cent of the year, the unit is at overcapacity.”
Anyone who has harmed themselves or taken an overdose of medication should call 911. Those experiencing suicidal thoughts can call 306-525-5333 (Mobile Crisis Services Regina), 306-933-6200 (Saskatoon Crisis Intervention Service) or toll-free 1-800-667-4442 (rural).