July 29, 2020

COVID-19 Mental Health Supports

Hello.

I'm Dr Sudit Ranade.

I'm the medical officer of health for the County of Lambton.

In recognition of national mental health week across the lifespan, I've invited two special guests to talk to you about how to address your mental health during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The first is Sue Barnes, who's the executive director of the St.

Clair Child & Youth Services, and the second is Alan Stevenson, who's the CEO of the Canadian Mental Health Association's Lambton Kent branch.

Please join me in welcoming them today.

Welcome.

Thank you.

Iappreciate being here today.

Thanks for having us.

It's nice to see both of you.

I'm goingto ask you a series of questions, and maybe we can go one by one, and then afterwards we can talk a little bit more about what your organizationsare seeing.

So the first question for each of you iswhat can people do to address their mental health in this time of COVID-19? So, I think first of all it's important for parents to take care of their own mental health, and I think Alan will talk more about the adult services.

For children and youth, I think it'simportant that um to recognize that children reactdifferently to stress, and it depends on their age theirdevelopmental level, but in general terms, I think it'simportant that parents speak openly with their kids aroundwhat's going on.

Be honest about the situation.

Pay attention to signs and symptoms of anxiety and depression, or low self-esteem.

Typically kids, when they're feelinganxious about things, will exhibit other symptoms or signsthat they haven't exhibited before.

And i think it's important that, not onlyto pay attention to them, to be able to respond to your childin an open honest way, pay attention to your child, play withyour child, you know, spend time outside doingphysical activities with your kids, keep your routines normal as possible.

That helps kids especially with anxiety, not to get dis-regulated and overly upset about things.

And just really listen.

And listen to your children's concerns.

I think another important thing is to keep an eye on signs and symptoms, And if they start interfering with their dailyactivities, and become an ongoing thing on a dailybasis, then you need to reach out for help.

Our mental health week message this year is get real about your mental health.

The importance of authentic conversations.

We know it's actually really normal to feel stressed and anxious, and really worried in this time.

Everybody's feeling it.

Some more than others.

For some, it has become a time of great distress.

And it's really critical to have authentic conversations with your friends, your partners, your peers, to share how you're feelingand get support from others.

To recognize that it's okay, it's perfectly human and normal to need that support.

We all need it.

And to know that you can get support.

If you need more than that, it'savailable to you.

It's really critical.

I think recognizing that we're all struggling with with social isolation.

It's really been such a change for everyone, and the importance of, again, not letting social distancing rule us to the point of not having thoseclose connections that we all really rely on.

That's critical to our mental health.

What are you seeing in terms of your services in terms of the demand in your organizations? So when COVID hit we closed ourphysical doors, and to protect our staff, and thepublic, and our clients, and we opened up right away within thatweek counseling through the phone system.

So clients could call in, speak to an intake worker, and then getconnected with the therapist within 24 hours.

Since then, we've moved to both counseling by phone and virtual platforms.

So, with the support of United Way, and the support of Talk for Tamara, and the support of the Sarnia Community Foundation, we were able to buy some licensing and platforms, and some computers and our staff are able to connect from home their homes and meet with clients to provide therapy, one-on-one counseling, brief services.

And also we've started launching our groups now in some of our workshops.

So we've been keeping our services going.

So please call 519-337-3701.

We are open and we're there to help you.

Any reason is not too small.

Just give us a call if you're feeling any distress at all.

So for us at CMHA, as well we've been open all along.

Moved primarily to virtual services, but not exclusively.

The majority of surfaces though are virtual stil.

We're just in the process now of thinking through how we will return to not focus as much on virtual services.

What we saw initially at the very earlyoutset was a real reduction, actually, in peoplereaching out for service.

And we attributed that to the majority of people thinking this is a short-term thing we just had to hunkerdown and get through it.

But more recently, really the lasttwo weeks, we've seen a real uptick in thenumber of people accessing our service, are reaching outfor our services.

All along we've been stayingconnected through virtual means with our existing clients, people thatwe've been serving for some time.

That's not changed.

We are finding though, as it's becoming clearer and clearer to people that this is a long-term game changer, that we don't know what the new normal is, but it isn't, we're not going back as quickly as we thought to our previous way of living, we're we are seeing with our current clients an increasing level of anxiety as well.

As well though with people who are reaching out to us, and as i said, that is beginning to increase really in the last couple of weeks, we are seeing the severity of their needs is higher.

We use the term acuity, and so people who are, who in the past may have sought services earlier thinking that they were available, they have access supports before their their symptoms worsened we're seeing that they've waited and and we don't want that to happen we want wereally want the community to know that it's okay to ask for helpearly in fact we know that when people ask formental health help earlier the outcomes areeasier to reach and they're often reached more quicklyso early intervention is all we we use the expressionearly intervention is critical it's the key to good success and good outcomesfor people so we really want we don't want people to wait untilthey're in crisis we want people to know that they can access help early onthey're more likely to have better outcomesat a uh and less distress less disruption to their livesthank you for that so how can people who might be seeking helpfor their friends or family or for themselves get in touch with each ofyour organizations sue i know you um gave some details but if you can go overthat again please both of you we're seeing a similarpattern to what alan is expressing as well um theuptick is increasing right now and if if umfolks want to get a hold of us they can call 519-337-3701and they will be connected to an intake worker and then we'll do the intakeprocess and see what services they need we also have an ontario earlier centerand they've been amazing right now at what they've been doing all kinds ofvirtual creativity going on there and so they have a facebookpage which is um i wrote it down just so i wouldn't forget what it wasum saint claire early on and if you go to their facebook page they have allkinds of activities for families to do with their kids while they're at home aswell so they're doing virtual story time and virtual activities withwith the staff so it's kind of really great to connect in with your kids andthey've got stuff going on they've got a virtual calendarposted so there's two two sites you can go tosaint claire you can go to st clearchild.

ca or the facebook page forour early on center so the best way to reach the canadianmental health association is our 1-800 numberand that's 1-800-307-4319 and we have staff answering that line forbetween the hours of eight at 8 a.

m and 10 p.

muh seven days a week and so um anyone and this is across lambton andkent but anyone can access services throughthat line if it is in those off sort of eveninghours or on the weekends it's going to be just a crisis responseas well as a link to a follow-up on the next businessday but we will certainly follow up withanybody who contacts us within the next business daythere will be a um a live i should say normally there will always be a liveanswer however we have begun to experience higher call volumesand so you may have to leave a a a number to call back we will call youback we're we're calling back uh at a minimumwithin an hour great thank you sue ellen thank youboth for spending time with me today thanks for the work that you and yourorganizations are doing to support mental health in the communityand i guess the message to everybody is there are these resources out there andwe want you to access them early if you think that you haveany concern about your mental health thank you for giving us the opportunityto talk with you today and if i can give a quick shout out to our youththey're posting their stories on instagram if you go tospoken hope underscore aom for access open minds you can read their storiesand they're brilliant thanks sue for pointing that out as wellthey are absolutely brilliant it's it is it is really amazing to seehow youth are changing the discussion around mental health uhfor all of us and i'm i'm truly thankful for thatthanks dr bonade for this opportunity to speak with you todaythank you stay well you too you too.