For years, mental health clients on the Sunshine Coast have been advocating for better treatment facilities and programs.In 2001 a group picketed St. Mary's Hospital to draw attention to the lack of mental health services and substandard facilities at the hospital.
Now, with the opening of a new, six-bed psychiatric unit at St. Mary's Hospital and increased funding for other mental health programs, many of those gaps have been closed.
"It's been a long time coming," said Brian Ludwig, president of the Arrowhead Centre Society, which provides services to people with mental illness. "For the community at large, it's a really good thing. Those people standing out there with the signs four years ago, they accomplished something."
In the past, psychiatric patients who could not be treated at St. Mary's were usually transferred to Lions Gate Hospital in North Vancouver. There, they had to deal with unfamiliar staff and surroundings, they were far from their friends and family, and in some cases they had difficulty making their way home to the Sunshine Coast after being discharged.
Now, said Ludwig, "Instead of being shipped off to North Vancouver, people can be cared for within the community. Relatives and support people can support them."
Paul Charron, director of Sunshine Coast Mental Health Services, has been working to establish the new psych unit for more than a year. Now the construction work is mostly done, staff have been hired and the new unit, located on the second floor of St. Mary's Hospital, should be ready to open within a few weeks.
Charron said providing treatment in the community is one of the major advantages of the new facility. "We shouldn't have to send people to Lions Gate any more. This will enable us to provide care to more individuals without having to go to the city, closer to home, closer to family," he said.
Having a specialized unit with specially trained staff provides a more comprehensive treatment approach, said Charron.
"It's a way more specialized area for people who, at their worst, need it," said Charron.
Charron said the new unit should also ease the crowding in the main ward of St. Mary's by freeing up beds formerly occupied by psychiatric patients. The new unit at St. Mary's is designed for relatively short stays. As in the past, clients who need long-term hospitalization will be transferred to Riverview Hospital.
The new, six-bed ward has two double rooms and two singles, one of which is wheelchair accessible. There is a shower room, a laundry room, and a telephone cubicle for the use of clients.
The psychiatric unit is in its own section of the hospital, at the east end of the second floor.
"It's an unlocked unit, but we have the capability to lock it if we have a wandering senior or a high-risk client," said Charron.
The hospital now also has 24-hour, seven-day-a week security to safeguard staff and patients, he added.
The secure room, which Charron said would be used "if someone's really out of control or stoned on crack cocaine," has a window onto the nursing station. As well, like all the rooms in the psychiatric unit, the secure room is monitored by video camera. The psych unit is staffed by registered nurses and licensed practical nurses, who all have training in psychiatric nursing, as well as a social worker and an occupational therapist hired specifically for this unit.
Those staff have already been hired and are working on the hospital's main floor and getting training while waiting for the psychiatric ward to open.
The annual cost for paying the additional staff and operating the new psych unit is just over $1 million.
Charron said this is a physician-run unit, which means family doctors will admit their patients here and provide their medical care. The hospital's psychiatrists - one full-time, one part-time, and one "travelling" psychiatrist who comes here several times a month - will act as consultants to the family doctors.
The psych unit's day room has easy chairs grouped around a television, a mini kitchen with microwave oven and sink, and an exercise bike in the corner.
"The expectation is people will also have programming during the day at the mental health building [located nearby on the hospital grounds]," said Charron. "There we have a social worker, recreational therapist and occupational therapist."
That linkage between hospital care and community mental health care will make for easier transitions in or out of hospital, said Charron.
"Many of the people admitted here, we will know. The same therapist deals with them, the same staff runs the programs."
Some of the mental health unit's staff, the crisis team nurses and social workers, are moving into a new office adjacent to the psych unit. There, said Charron, they will be close at hand when people are admitted to the emergency room.
"There was lots of discussion, lots of collective wisdom, input from staff in planning the unit. And the construction has been just excellent," said Charron.
