Michael A. Smith

OTTAWA — Doug Ford’s government has promised new investments into mental health, however, youth advocates worry about how the funding will be distributed. According to an analysis of public records, youth mental health services has decreased in funding by 1.2% over the past four years, while advocates say hospitalizations have increased by 79%. The discrepancy is resulting in programs having a lack of funds necessary to provide intensive treatment in Ottawa.

“On behalf of Ottawa, we know we do not have efficient intensive specialized services for young people … that’s where we should put some of our dollars” said Joanne Lowe, executive director at the Youth Services Bureau.

The bureau runs the Bridges project, its goal is to help youth ages 13 – 25 access intensive mental health treatment after their initial hospitalization.  A lot of the times’ ER visits and hospitalizations only treat the symptoms of an emergency not the source of it, said Lowe. The bridges project is meant to build on the gains made in the hospital and “catch the patients at a point when we can actually intervene more intensively,” she said.

The project has continually lacked proper funding, which has impeded its ability to serve patients. According to Lowe, it costs about a million dollars a year to operate the program, but it has only received $600,000 in provincial government funds in the past seven years. It is causing the program to rely on fundraising and help from Ottawa Public Health and the Royal Ottawa Mental Health Center to contribute staff.

“This last year we lost an occupational therapist position and we lost time with psychologists,” thus stunting the project’s growth, explained Lowe.

The hope is that the federal and provincial governments additional investment of $3.8 billion over ten years into mental health will be distributed evenly amongst the adult and youth systems.

As of now, adult services are funded in the billions while youth services are funded in the millions said, Lowe. Furthermore, the investment is $330 million a year less than what was promised by the liberals when they were in office.

That doesn’t discourage groups like Children Mental Health Ontario, who are optimistic about the investments. Their CEO, Kim Moran, calls it a “landmark announcement” and Lowe says it is “a step in the right direction.”

However, Bhutila Karpoche, NDP’s mental health and addictions critic, is not as optimistic. “It’s unclear where the money is going to go at this point,” she said.

But the Ford government has announced that a part of their investment will go towards training for police and first responders in how to deal with peoples with mental health issues.

Since speaking to Karpoche, the government has also announced that they’ll spend $665 million on the construction of two new Centers for Mental Health.

The two new buildings will house 235 inpatient beds for various levels of mental illness, along with specialized clinics. These additions will alleviate some of the demand for resources, but they do not focus specifically on youth care, which was the main concern for youth advocates.

It is not only a lack of beds in hospitals that are impeding youth mental health care but it is also the lack of clinical staff says, Moran. She believes that “the bottleneck in care comes from a lack of high-quality intensive treatment using counselling and therapy.”

The bridges program provides such care, but there has been no indication that programs like it will receive an increase in funding.

Both Moran and Lowe have lobbied the Ford government to fund more youth services. However, they will have to wait until the budget is announced in the spring to find out if their wish comes true.