‘IN A CRISIS’
The organizer of the How Many Wade campaign talks about its overall success and what’s next to help improve mental-health services on P.E.I.
After the How Many Wade campaign, organizer talks about what’s next to improve P.E.I.’s mental health services
It started with a single voice on a dark and rainy night.
A friend of Sarah Stewart-Clark was out searching the Hillsborough River for her son after he attempted to take his own life.
Stewart-Clark, who has a son of her own, said she felt helpless in this situation and decided she had to do something to help her friend and others who were falling through the cracks in the P.E.I. mental-health system.
And it was from this incident that the How Many Wade campaign was born.
That was story number one. And now, 100 stories of 100 families in 100 days have been told about the P.E.I. mental-health system.
Stewart-Clark, who is originally from Charlottetown, said the campaign was meant to educate Islanders that P.E.I. is failing when it comes to providing adequate mental-health services to those in a crisis.
“I just assumed all the help that would be required would be available immediately to someone in distress, but I quickly learned it wasn’t,” said Stewart-Clark. “We really are in a crisis right now.”
Stewart-Clark said the campaign was also meant to demonstrate to Health Minister Robert Henderson that these were repeated and widespread failures to the system and not just “one off” situations that the government couldn’t plan for or see in advance.
Henderson is challenged with trying to balance preventative measures so these things don’t happen down the road and dealing with the volume coming in the door.
“These are very complex issues, the issues around mental health,” said Henderson. “From my perspective as a minister, it’s kind of our number one issue that we are trying to grapple with and trying to come up with some solutions.”
Henderson said they are currently in the process of filling the positions of the mental health nurses for Island schools, and a new psychiatrist, Dr. Mahesh Nachnani, began practising on P.E.I. a couple of weeks ago. However, Henderson admits they are struggling with recruiting and retention in P.E.I. The province still has four vacancies in psychiatry in a compliment of 15.
Henderson said moving forward they plan to consult with Nachnani about what a mobile
crisis response team would look like since this is his area of expertise.
Henderson said they also plan to explore tele-health oncall psychiatry services to help with the volume pressures since they are facing psychiatric staffing shortages.
“We are doing lots,” said Henderson “Is it ever enough? Will it ever eliminate all suicides? Probably never, but you have got to try and do the best we can and I would say we are implementing things.”
Although the 100-day campaign concluded Aug. 14, the fight for better mental-health
services for Islanders is far from over for Stewart-Clark, who has created a working committee on mental wellness in P.E.I. to advocate for better mental health services.
She has also created a survey for Islanders to get feedback regarding the mental-health system on P.E.I. and what could be done to improve it.
“The campaign was not to say the entire system is a disaster,” said Stewart-Clark. “There are lots of successes of people getting help, but we feel the number of failures and the severity of them are too much to ignore.”
Another survey is also in the works to get feedback from health-care workers.
Stewart-Clark feels the campaign has not only created awareness with the general public but that the Facebook page has also evolved into a supportive community for individuals struggling with accessing mental-health services on P.E.I.