Access to treatment delayed

You've got the diagnosis: Your child has a mental health problem. Treatment is coming, but not for months. What now?

Lynda Cranston,

Originally published in Today's Parent August 2009

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Nine-year-old Maeve Hay-Cooper was always a nervous child, but nothing that seemed out of the ordinary…until the day she refused to eat the delivery pizza, convinced it had been poisoned. Next came the constant handwashing that left her hands red, chapped and bleeding. “If we tried to stop her, she was frantic — so frantic she would become violent,” says her mother, Nancy. Then Maeve refused to go to school, afraid of being left there by her parents.

It was clear to Nancy and her husband, both social workers in the mental health field, that something was terribly wrong. They sought help for Maeve early on, but it was six long months before she would receive treatment — for what they found out was obsessive-compulsive disorder — and start to recover.

Maeve’s story is not unusual: More than 800,000 Canadian children (about 15 percent of all kids) suffer from mental health disorders, most commonly anxiety, depression, conduct disorder and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Whatever the problem, early treatment can help many children to fully recover or, at the very least, learn to manage their symptoms to live full and productive lives.

But early treatment is near impossible with the severe shortage of services for children’s mental health. Many families face wait-lists that last weeks, months, sometimes years. This delay can be frustrating, even terrifying if you don’t have a diagnosis, and don’t really understand what’s wrong or where to turn for help. But you don’t have to sit idly by, waiting and worrying about your child. Here’s what you can do now to make the wait time count.

Search for services

There is no master list of child mental health services in Canada. “Resources are a patchwork. Services vary depending on which province you’re in, even which county you’re in,” says Michael Cheng, an Ottawa child psychologist and co-founder of the eMentalHealth.ca project. So it will take some legwork to find out about services in your community.

Here’s how to get started:

Book a visit with your family doctor or paediatrician to ask about services near you. Many doctors can put you in touch with a network of mental health contacts.
See your child’s teacher and principal. Ask if your school board has a mental health worker who can provide services or refer you to someone who can.
Ask about an employee assistance program through your or your partner’s employer.
Consider private treatment. Wait times are usually shorter, but can be pricey — anywhere from around $40 to $180 an hour, depending on the therapist. Third-party insurance (through work, for example) may cover a portion of these fees. Ask about a sliding fee scale — some therapists may lower their rate based on your income.
Use the Internet (go to Todaysparent.com/mentalhealth for a list of helpful websites).
Look to your university. If there’s one in your area, contact the psychology or education department to ask about on-campus services. At the University of Calgary Applied Psychological and Educational Services (U-CAPES), more than 20 full-time psychology graduate students, supervised by registered psychologists, provide mental health assessment and treatment to the public. Wait times for services are somewhat shorter at U-CAPES, running three to four months on average. Fees are lower too. “Everyone who comes through our doors pays a fee, but it’s usually a half or one-third the cost of private services,” says director Kelly Schwartz. What’s more, all fees go back into scholarship programs for the students.

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