CORNER BROOK There is a reason a community-based team helping people live with severe and persistent mental illness acts assertively — it works.
The Assertive Community Treatment Team (ACTT) has been available in Corner Brook for approximately two years, having reached its current maximum capacity with the available staff in place.
Through its three consulting psychiatrists, the team — comprised of two psychiatric nurses, a social worker, occupational therapist, addiction counselor, mental health worker, peer support specialist, program assistant and manager — target people who have psychiatric disorders which cause symptoms and impairments in basic mental and behavioral processes. Most often those disorders are schizophrenia, schizoaffective disorder or bipolar disorder.
Pamela Parsons, manager of mental health and addictions with Western Health, said the team has been effective in its objectives of reducing hospital days and creating higher level of housing stability. She says the team has also been efficient in assisting improve symptoms and social functioning, establishing a higher quality of life, and increasing client and family satisfaction with services.
“I know it is making a difference, I hear it from clients all the time,” Parsons told a small group gathered for the Community Mental Health Initiative Inc.’s annual general meeting Friday in Corner Brook. “I get letters, they call me, they tell me, I see it with my own eyes. It really is working.”
She said there is proof of the lessening burden this program creates for the health care system. Of the 26 clients treated in the entire year of 2010, in total, they were hospitalized 36 times the previous year accounting for 1,141 hospital days. The first six months of 2010, which is the data available to Parsons for now, those same clients were hospitalized four times for a total of 22 days.
The eligible clients treated in this community setting typically improve only partially or not at all with medication and other treatment, people who resist or avoid involvement in services, and those more likely to be homeless or live in substandard housing, frequently use emergency and inpatient services, be arrested and incarcerated or die prematurely from suicide or physical illness.
With six and a half staff positions on the team and maintaining a maximum 1:10 staff-client ratio, the maximum number of clients is 65. The team currently has 66 clients and a small wait list of one or two people. So, with the goal of continuous, long-term service, the only forseeable way to expand to new clients is bringing in more staff. Parsons said efforts are being made, hopefully, to make that happen.
“We are really excited,” she said. “I am very proud of the ACT Team and all the staff are wonderful, the clients are doing so well.
“In the last five or six years, it is amazing how much resources has been put into community mental health. It is needed for sure.”
The Western Health Assertive Community Treatment Team covers Corner Brook, the Bay of Islands, and throughout the Humber Valley including Deer Lake.
For further information call 639-1723.
