A new mental health program is being put in place across the province to help doctors make earlier diagnoses for children and youth.
BC Medical Association (BCMA) president Dr. Shelley Ross and health minister Dr. Margaret MacDiarmid announced the initiative recently. The program aims to bridge the gap between the two different worlds of education system and the medical system by involving teachers, school counsellors and youth mental health clinicians in identifying youth and children in need.
“With this new program, family physicians will be able to better identify and manage problems early on, while working with community partners to provide a wrap-around system of care that goes beyond the doctor’s office,” said Ross. “Children suffering from mild to moderate anxiety, depression and Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) are often difficult to diagnose. In addition to their suffering, they are also often stigmatized and alienated by peers in their communities and schools.”
Since last spring Dr. Bruce Hobson, a local family physician, has helped organize and deliver presentations and training sessions for family doctors, school counsellors and child and youth mental health workers in Powell River. These professional development sessions introduce people who are not medically trained to identify and screen children who might be having mental health disorders.
The professional development program was created by the Practice Support Program (PSP). PSP is a joint program of the Ministry of Health and BCMA. It is also created in partnership with Dr. Stan Kutcher, an internationally-renowned expert in adolescent mental health, psychiatrist Dr. Jana Davidson and psychiatric specialists, pediatricians, school counsellors and staff from the provincial ministries of education and children and family development.
Powell River does not have a full-time child psychiatrist, but does receive regular visits from one.
The identification and screening procedure uses questionnaires to give physicians, school counsellors, or child and youth mental health workers “good evidence-based tools and resources that everybody is familiar with using,” said Hobson.
The biggest thing was “just having everyone on common ground and talking,” he added.
“We haven’t been communicating as well as we could have,” said Hobson. “We’re going to start sharing information and talking to each other about what’s going on with specific children.”
Setting up a system for communication and then figuring out a way of “getting across-the-board consent to have the conversations,” are some of the biggest challenges to getting the program up and running in Powell River, but Hobson is confident these challenges can be overcome.
Communication is complicated by the fact that not all the community partners can communicate by the same means.
“Child and youth mental health offices can’t use email,” he said, “but we can fax them. School counsellors can’t use fax because the fax is in the school administration offices but they can use email. Then there’s confidential issues around email. Trying to get hold of people by phone is always an issue and then there’s that whole consent form that covers everything. These are the things we’re working on right now.”
Hobson said he hopes the program can be extended to involve teachers in the future.
“They’re the ones who are the frontline,” he said. “They’re the ones who see the kids all the time and nothing that we’re doing is so specialized that anyone can’t use the tools or questionnaires if they see there is an issue.”
As a bottom line, asking the questions is not going to do any harm, he said. It’s going to show children and youth that there are people who care and are concerned.
