Vancouver, Canada – The Victoria and Vancouver provinces have an innovative mental health care approach that could be imitated by other communities, while the mayors of British Columbia ordered the re-opening of residential beds for those mentally ill and severely addicted.
Both the Victoria and Vancouver communities have experienced a dramatic decrease in their hospital and urgent care clinic visits, as well as in the police calls from distressed citizens. The reason behind the dramatic change is their innovative mental health care approach, providing Assertive Community Treatment (ACT) teams, which are composed of social workers, medical specialists, and plainclothes policemen. The teams tend to treat patients who are mentally ill or addicted, and were arrested or charged with offenses. Patients also include those who cannot be treated in a traditional outpatient care.
People with mental illness and any kind of addiction need urgent care, diagnosis, and treatment. These conditions have been the root cause of police calls throughout Victoria, measuring between 60% and 70%, Mayor Dean Fortin said. Victoria officials created 4 ACT teams in 2009, following the call for a more collaborative method. Since the creation of the ACT teams, the patients’ visits to urgent care clinics and hospitals were reduced. Fortin also pointed out that interactions with the police were cut down by 75%.
Other community officials consider the mental health care approach as an effective, long-term method in dealing with such issues. Some officials also emphasize that similar ACT teams are necessary resources. Recent data also showed that emergency room visits in Vancouver were reduced almost half, while the law enforcement negative contacts were cut down by 34%, according to the police mental health unit Sgt. Howard Tran.
British Columbia now has 15 ACT teams; however, police teams are included only in Victoria and Vancouver. ACT teams in Vancouver have 232 patients, along with 40 distressed patients. The additional 40 are being assisted by two teams with a more aggressive outreach approach. These patients are given an urgent care near me until they are registered or accepted by a certain ACT team.
The ACT teams with police tend to provide real-time information concerning activities of patients, such as a relapse after a heroin injection for instance, Tran added. He also pointed out that mental health and criminal justice never work together. Health deals with the patients’ welfare and officials only aim for public safety. The mental health care approach they are doing does not intend to put individuals in jail.
