By: Dr. Mahdi Memarpour, Chief of Psychiatry, Southlake Regional Health Centre
Mental health needs more than medicine. For these patients, space is as important a tool as an MRI is to screen for tumours. I see the importance of space every day in the work I do at Southlake Regional Health Centre, and how desperately it’s needed to provide better support for patients in our communities.
That’s why Southlake Foundation has launched our $7.5 million .Better begins today Campaign to transform mental health care at Southlake. Our mental health spaces are undergoing drastic and urgently-needed changes – and they’re already making a difference.
The recently opened Emergent Mental Health Assessment Unit has six private assessment rooms with beds, windows and televisions, where patients can see a psychiatrist and begin treatment immediately until inpatient beds are available. And a new 12-bed Adult Inpatient Unit will boost Southlake’s total inpatient mental health capacity from 24 beds to 36, along with new indoor and outdoor common spaces for social interaction, recreation and treatment.
But it’s not about the space itself – it’s about who that space is helping.
On average, 17 patients come into our Emergency Department every day experiencing a mental health crisis. With the new Emergent Mental Health Assessment Unit, they will be able to start their treatment from the moment they come through our doors, rather than waiting up to 5 days in our Emergency Department before being admitted. They now have a more peaceful and healing environment with space to move and important natural light, and will be treated with the dignity they deserve thanks to enhanced privacy features. The new 12-bed Adult Inpatient Unit will allow us to care for 400 more patients each year.
Families will be able to be more involved in the care journey, making them better equipped to provide support at home and minimizing stress knowing their loved ones are in a positive environment. We’ll support our hospital overall by alleviating the pressure on our already stretched Emergency Department to enable more timely access to critical care.
And the benefits for staff are undeniable. By eliminating space as a barrier to the best patient outcomes, we’ll have a healing environment where my colleagues and I can do our best work for the patients who depend on us. With the right space as a tool, our compassionate team can provide leading edge care and best results for our patients.
Mental illness is a crisis shared by our entire community, made more apparent than ever through the prolonged stress and isolation of the pandemic. In fact, we’re already seeing increased numbers of patients who are suffering from acute mental illness for the first time as a direct result of COVID-19. That includes more people suffering from severe anxiety and stress, and more people willing to reach out and ask for help.
But we don’t just get better. We build it together. With your support, better can begin right here in your community at Southlake.
To learn more about how the .Better begins today Campaign will transform mental health care at our hospital, visit southlake.ca/better.
Dr. Mahdi Memarpour is Chief of Psychiatry at Southlake Regional Health Centre, a full-service hospital with a regional, clinically advanced focus providing care right from birth to end of life, and leading edge services such as cardiac and cancer care across York Region and Simcoe-Muskoka.
