A collaboration between local police and mental-health experts in Cobourg and Northumberland County is looking to change the way people receive mental-health support.
A new mobile mental-health program called M-HEART, also known as the mental health engagement and response team, was officially announced on Thursday at the Northumberland Hills Hospital (NHH) in Cobourg. It will be in operation five days a week beginning this spring.
It’s a joint project between health-care experts at the NHH and both the Cobourg Police Service and the Northumberland OPP, whose goals is to take advanced care techniques on the road and directly into the homes of those in need of mental-health care.
“We know with mental health that people don’t always access the service right at the beginning of noticing any symptoms… as they tend to put that off,” said Jennifer Cox, the clinical manager of the community mental-health program at NHH. “But we do know that one in five people are struggling with a mental-health issue and so by leaving that and waiting means things can escalate and get worse.”
Beginning in the spring, the M-HEART team will be on the road five days a week, providing specialized mental-health support early on, and to those in need, with the aim to best direct them to the proper avenues of care.
It’s going to be a community approach to providing service, says OPP mental-health liaison officer Nancy Wagner.
“The mental-health nurse will ride along with us and myself, and we’ll respond to crisis calls,” said Wagner. “And we’ll respond proactively to calls after they have come in and where necessary, we’ll follow up the next day and make sure that people are connected to services.”
The Central East Local Health Integration Network (LHIN) will provide funding for the project to employ a nurse and police expert to spearhead the project. It’s the equivalent of 1.5 full-time staff and if the project is successful, Central East LHIN board chair Louis O’Brien says they will look at other funding options.
“This initiative will be a terrific way to get these people the help that they need because they don’t get it behind bars,” said O’Brien. “They get it here at the hospital and with the psychiatrist.”
It’s expected the M-HEART team will help relieve stress not only on the police services involved, who say mental-health calls continue to increase, but it will also relieve the strain on staff at the Northumberland Hills Hospital, where more than 1,100 mental-health patients came through its emergency room doors last year.
Organizers say the Port Hope Police Service is looking to join the program, to provide the mental-health service as well, in the near future.