Pictou mental health unit won't reopen as it was, health authority says

Pictou County's mental health unit has been shut for nine months and won't reopen under the old model, the Nova Scotia Health Authority said Tuesday.

Linda Courey, senior director of Mental Health and Addiction Servicesfor the Nova Scotia Health Authority, said the old way didn't best serve the community needs.

"Back when the unit closed and we began to understand a little bit more about its functions, we discovered that it operated quite differently than any other mental-health unit in the province," she said on CBC Halifax'sInformation Morning.

She flagged specific problems. The old eight-bed in-patient unit in the Aberdeen Hospitalwas:

• Overseen by family doctors, not psychiatrists
• Didn't accept involuntary patients
• Didn't meet provincial standards for in-patient mental-health units

"If the unit does reopen, it will not be run in the same way," she said.

Courey said the replacement care offered over the last months has been "providing better care for people to ensure they're more likely to be seen by the crisis-response team or mental-health professionals when they come to the emergency department in crisis."

Patients transferred for care

As of April 8, 61 patients went to the hospital emergency room seeking mental-health help. Of those:

• 12 needed involuntary admission and were transferred elsewhere in the province
• 27 needed help for withdrawal management and were directed to addictions units elsewhere in the province, or to the IWK for young people
• 22 needed voluntary admission and were received at another unit

Those transferred got care in Antigonish, Truro, or further afield. Courey understands that people would rather get all health care closer to home.

"And that's just not possible for certain types of surgery;it's not possible in this kind of case. What we have to look at here are what are the most essential services that absolutely must be close to home and that is emergency care and community-based outpatient mental health and addictions care," she said.

She said the shuttered unit's final fate won't be known until more province-wide decisions are made about providing mental health care.

• Aberdeen Hospital mental health unit closure 'a dire issue,' says family