Mental Health & Criminal Justice

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New mental health curriculum guide targets high schools

An October 26th posting by the Dalhousie University Medical School:

By Margo Wheaton

Dealing with a mental health disorder can be overwhelming, especially for adolescents. At a time when fitting in feels crucial, it can be hard for a teen to admit how down she is or how alone he feels.

Although it’s estimated that mental health problems affect one in five young people in Canada, early diagnosis and treatment of conditions such as depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, bulimia and anxiety disorders remains elusive. As a result, many young people aren’t receiving the help they need.



Dr. Stan Kutcher [pictured], a professor in the Department of Psychiatry at Dalhousie University's Faculty of Medicine and the holder of the Sun Life Financial Chair in Adolescent Mental Health, has a group that has been working to change that.

Through a partnership with the Canadian Mental Health Association, Kutcher and his team at the IWK Health Centre have developed the Mental Health and High School Curriculum Guide, an innovative learning resource for secondary school teachers. The guide represents a component of the first expert-reviewed comprehensive school-based mental health program in the country and combines collaborative learning strategies with interactive multimedia tools.

The goal? To increase mental health awareness and literacy in students, teachers, and families.

According to Kutcher, who is this year’s recipient of the J.M. Cleghorn Award for Excellence in Leadership in Clinical Research, early identification of mental disorders in adolescents is key: “The data is very clear. We know that early identification and early effective treatment has profound short and long term positive outcomes not only in terms of the disorder but in terms of secondary prevention.”

He notes that identifying mental disorders in adolescence can help prevent substance abuse and social-vocational problems and stresses that failure to identify and treat mental illness in teenagers can have dire consequences: “Jail has become the new mental hospital for kids. We have to intervene earlier.”

By equipping schools with the most current resources in mental health and education along with the tools to facilitate dialogue in the classroom, teachers and students alike will be in a better position to see mental health problems for what they are and know there’s no shame in seeking help.

The curriculum guide, which consists of lesson plans, student-friendly activities and audiovisual resources, has already been successfully field-tested at Forest Heights Community School and will be further evaluated in two Digby schools early in the new year. A national launch of the program will take place in the next few months.

The curriculum resource is part of a larger framework called Pathways to Care, a collaborative, inter-disciplinary approach to adolescent mental health that’s been developed by the Sun Life team as part of its mission to disseminate the most current scientific information available. Other resources include a number of creative, interactive and user-friendly materials specifically for parents, siblings, healthcare providers and, of course, for teens themselves.

By educating the most important people in a child’s life about mental health, the model cuts across sectors and emphasizes the importance of community connections as a gateway to early detection and treatment.

Kutcher notes that “what we’re doing in the schools here is really cutting edge” and is very appreciative of support from the Provincial Department of Education, the Schools Plus Program, school boards, schools, educators and others without whom the work could not be successful. He points out that the Mental Health Commission of Canada has identified school mental health as a national priority and he envisions it as a major area of investment and development over the next decade.

“We’re now developing national and international linkages in school mental health and I think that we’re well positioned to take a leadership role. I’m hopeful that the province will continue to work very closely with us as we move that agenda forward.”


Media enquiries:

Allison Gerrard, Dalhousie Medical School, (902) 494.1789 / (902) 222.1917, allison.gerrard@dal.ca

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Province, psychiatrists sign two-year contract

An article published in today's edition of The Chronicle Herald:

Specialists to get $147.99 an hour

By DAVID JACKSON, Provincial Reporter

Halifax-area psychiatrists have reached a new funding deal with the Health Department, one the government hopes will help keep the specialists in Nova Scotia.

The province just signed off on the two-year deal, called an academic funding plan, this month. It will help ensure that doctors are actually getting paid for the hours they work, said Victoria Goldring, director of physician services for the Health Department.

Psychiatrists had complained that they were working a combined 20,000 hours more a year than what the previous contract would pay them for, she said.

Goldring said the new contract focuses on hours of service, for both clinical work and teaching. It says the department will cover 156,000 hours a year, with 80 per cent for clinical work and 20 per cent for teaching, research and administration.

That number of hours is the equivalent of 75 doctors working 40 hours a week for the 52 weeks in a year.

The hourly rate increases to $147.99, a 2.9 per cent increase from $143.78. The ballpark salary for a psychiatrist, depending on whether they’re a full professor and other factors, is about $300,000 [per year], Goldring said.

The deal adds about $3 million to the $20-million budget under the previous interim agreement.

Goldring said the new agreement would cover up to 75 psychiatrists, but they are currently several doctors short of a full complement. They work at the Queen Elizabeth II Health Sciences Centre and the IWK Health Centre and teach at Dalhousie University.

She said recruiting and retaining psychiatrists, who are in demand across the country, was top of mind during contract negotiations. She said the province aimed for the new deal to put psychiatrists’ pay here in the middle of the pack nationally.

"They are now at a more competitive rate compared to their counterparts across the country," Goldring said.

"There are shortages of psychiatrists all across the country, but this will help in providing a bit of stability to their numbers here."

A spokesperson for the psychiatrists could not be reached Friday.

Last November, they had threatened to withhold services from the new mental health court after they said the province missed an Oct. 31 deadline for a new deal.

It wasn’t clear Friday whether they had followed through.

The psychiatrists’ last contract expired in 2007, but there was an interim agreement to 2009. This new deal is effective from April 1, 2009 to March 31, 2011.

(djackson@herald.ca)

Dalhousie University Department of Psychiatry Headlines

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Page 6 of the March 2009 issue features a profile of Dr. Zenovia Ursuliak (pictured, right), a regular guest educator on motivational interviewing at meetings of the HRM Chapter of the SSNS.


To view back issues of Psychiatry Headlines, please click here.