Covenant House Vancouver

The Mental Health Commission of Canada is researching the effects of mental health and homelessness. Their current project “At Home/Chez Soi”, the largest research project of its kind in the world, is underway in five cities across Canada.

The At Home/Chez Soi website states “the project is based on a Housing First approach (The hypothesis is that once a person is given a place to live, he/she can then better concentrate on other personal issues.). A total of 2285 homeless people living with a mental illness will participate. 1,325 people from that group will be given a place to live, and will be offered services to assist them over the course of the initiative. The remaining participants will receive the regular services that are currently available in their cities.”

The Vancouver portion of the At Home/Chez Soi research project will focus on people with addictions and mental health issues. The property where the 4 years of research will be taking place is the Bosman Hotel Community. This building just recently reopened and has the capacity to house and support 100 people.

One of Vancouver's most popular bloggers, Raul Pacheco, and his friend and follow blogger, Isabella Mori, organize "Mental Health Camp". Raul has written a great piece about mental health and how every one of us can suffer from a mental illness of some kind.

This year Mental Health Camp is focusing on breaking the silence of this pervasive and often debilitating condition. I am so pleased that Raul and Isabella take on this project; the more people learn about mental illness the better. I think of our young people and how many of them have serious mental illness concerns and how their lives could/would be better if a) they had been diagnosed earlier and b) their families understood the symptoms of their illness. Left untreated, the symptoms of bi-polar and schizophrenia, for example, are often "masked" with self-medicating -anything to make the "voices stop" or to numb the pain.

Mental illness is a mystery to a lot of people unless you've experienced it, or know someone who has. A few years ago, I had a bout of depression and at the time I was so worried about what "people would think" - would my employer think less of me? I sought treatment but I struggled with telling people, especially my parents: i was embarrassed and felt like a failure.

Do you have or have you had a mental illness?

Kevin Takahashi and Alex Lau from RBC Financial presented Krista Thompson, Executive Director of Covenant House Vancouver with a donation of $40,000 to help fund Covenant House's Mental Health Program.

This donation of $40,000 will help to ensure that our Mental Health program will reamin open and ready to assist the 1,900 homeless young people that will walk through our doors this year. Each year, our understanding of the root causes of homelessness becomes clearer and we are able create programs like this, to better serve our young people, thanks to our caring friends such as the RBC Foundation.

Covenant House Vancouver and the Inner City Youth Mental Health Project (ICYMHP) were recently recognized nationally by the National Eva's Innovation Award, generously sponsored by CIBC. Covenant House Vancouver was chosen as one of three award winners out of 31 applications received from across Canada.

ICYMHP provides youth with access to immediate on-site treatment for mental illness and is coordinated by two in-house mental health clinicians from Covenant House and delivered by a team of six psychiatrists from St. Paul's Hospital. The psychiatric team provides service in both Covenant House locations, with a case load that includes approximately half of all youth in the shelter at any given time. Young people in the mental health project are also supported by other Covenant House programs, including case management, the transitional housing program, drug and alcohol counselling, and life-skills training.

ICYMHP is innovative in that psychiatric services are being made available to homeless youth where and when they need them. The project offers the opportunity to proactively address mental illness among homeless youth and avoid hospitalization. In diagnosing mental illness and helping youth follow through with a treatment plan, ICYMHP is key to improving youth's readiness to access and manage housing for themselves.

Thank you to Eva's Initiative's and CIBC for recognizing us in this way!

Pictured here are (left to right) Covenant House's mental health clinician Tracy Brown, Eva's Initiatives Rachel Gray, Tristan Klassen, Covenant House Development Officer and Mark Simoes from CIBC.

I want to share with you a wonderful article I stumbled upon about a doctor who is teaching standup comedy as a way to help and empower people with mental health issues. The Article is by Fabiola Carletti and is called "A Funny Thing Happen to Me on the Way to Mental Illness". Please click here to learn about tackling mental illness in a whole new way.

 Yesterday afternoon I spoke to the customer service agent at one of our vendors. The women disclosed that she has a son that has been staying with us off and on for several years. She mentioned that she knew for years that just the drug & Alcohol counselling was not enough that he had mental health issues that were not being considered.

She said that since the mental health program has started at CHV that her son has been getting lots of effective help from us and the doctors from St. Paul's. In her words, she said that this is the first time that she has "seen her son" in years. Because of the mental health program, he's finally getting the proper medication and care that he's needed for a long time. Kudos Ron

If you are interested in learning more about Covenant House Vancouver and St. Paul's Hospital's Mental Health Project please see link below for a story done by:
Jaeny Baik, Reporter, The Early Edition CBC Radio British Columbia.

www.cbc.ca/earlyedition

Please click on the Tuesday Listen Again Icon the story is at the 02:13:30 mark.

Tom had been living on the streets, on the beach and in adult shelters before he first came to Covenant House. He had fled the family home because of conflict with his parents. Tom managed to get odd jobs now and then but was unable to keep them. He was a daily pot smoker and because of this was discharged from our shelter several times as he would often come back "high".

Though staff couldn't put their finger on it, there was something about Tom that wasn't "quite right". During his 7th intake into the shelter, one of our youth workers, Tracy, noticed Tom staring at the desk. She asked Tom what he was looking at and he said it was a bug. Curious, Tracy started asking Tom more and more questions and it became apparent that he was experiencing both visual and auditory hallucinations. He had never told anyone before. A myriad of delusions plagued Tom every day and he was using marijuana to quiet down his mind.  

Once this piece of the puzzle was assembled, Tracy got Tom a psychiatric assessment which confirmed that he had schizophrenia (a mental illness that causes hallucinations, distortion of reality, paranoia and disorganized speech and thinking). Tracy was then able to trace back the beginnings of Tom's family conflict to age 15, when his symptoms first appeared (75% of those with schizophrenia become ill between 17 and 25).

I have attached an article on disordered eating for everyone. In some way, shape or form regardless of what department you work in, we are all affected by disordered eating here at Covenant House. For the last year this has been a fairly hot topic so when I read this article I thought many of you might appreciate it.

Often the focus is on how little or how much a person is eating. Therapeutically this is not where the focus lies and it sometimes is confusing when quantity is not the primary focus for a client who has disordered eating. This article defines all the various eating disorders, the concerns and causes and it explains the process of healing.

I encourage you all to have a read and if you have any questions or feedback please feel free to leave a comment.

Cheers,

Tracy