2014 Legislative Session: Second Session, 40th Parliament
SELECT STANDING COMMITTEE ON CHILDREN AND YOUTH
J. Thornthwaite (Chair):
We’re motoring along. Our next presenters are from Vancouver Coastal Health: Yasmin Jetha and Dr. Mathias.
Y. Jetha: Thank you for the opportunity to present to you. We’re presenting today, obviously, from a Vancouver Coastal Health lens and really wanted to share with you…. When I thought about what the key areas are that we’re focusing on and what to present, it really made me think about child and youth mental health but within context — within the context of family, within the context of the system, but also within geography because our health authority does span urban and rural environments. That’s kind of the focus we’ll be taking here.
In doing so, I found this quote from the Mental Health Commission of Canada that I thought was really important. The first part I know you’ve heard before. It really talks about the fact that more than two-thirds of adults living with mental health problems reported that symptoms first appeared during their youth. For me, the more important aspect, what goes along with this, is quite vital. The next sentence says that “establishing the foundation for healthy emotional and social development is vital.”
When we think about that foundation, that really is family. So one of the areas we focus a lot on within Vancouver Coastal Health is providing care within the context of family. When you think about child and youth mental health, it really is child and youth and family mental health. In doing so, one of our communities of care, Richmond particularly, has really focused on a program around supporting families where there is parental mental illness, because we know that when there is parental mental illness, that does impact the family.
We need to know how to support from that lens. What we did is we met with family members who have been supported by our services and did a number of family-journey maps. I want to share this one with you. The themes are similar across the board, but I just wanted to share this one with you. It spans a time of a young boy’s life from birth until about grade 1, really going through what the family experienced.
In this instance you’d look at starting off with the mom, who was diagnosed with major depression at the age of 15 and was not on medications but knew she had depression. Shortly after, she met the young man who she married and ended up in an abusive marriage, and they had a child. The son was born and, as normal, the public health nurse came to the home, and what she did, when she came home, was she focused on breastfeeding, because oftentimes our system is such that you come in and you do this part of the work.
http://www.leg.bc.ca/cmt/40thparl/session-2/cay/hansard/20140611am-ChildrenYouth-Vancouver-n10.htm#10:1325 https://www.flickr.com/photos/vancouvercoastalhealth/7421660276/.
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