New digs for mental health

New digs for mental health
By Dan Hilborn, Burnaby Now assistant editor
Published July 19, 2003


Change is never easy, especially when the person being asked to accept new ideas suffers from a mental illness.

But the manager of Burnaby Mental Health Services is more than confident that his 90 staff and almost 2,000 clients will be glad to move out of their 46-year-old location on Willingdon Avenue this week.

"This is amazing. There is no comparison," Akinlolu Falode said Thursday afternoon as he moved boxes into spacious new surroundings in the former Cascades residence located at Burnaby Hospital.

"At first there was a lot of negativity and resistance to the move," Falode said. "But, now that people can see the finished product, they can't believe it."

The new Burnaby Mental Health Centre will be spread over two floors of the former Cascades building, which has undergone a $2.5- million renovation that included all new panelling, paint, furniture and office fixtures, including many new computers.

When the centre opens on Monday morning, it will house the bulk of the services provided by the Fraser Health Authority to mental health 'consumers' living in Burnaby.

While Burnaby Mental Health will continue to operate smaller 10- to 15-person offices at both Middlegate Mall and on East Hastings Street, the hub of its activities will now be relocated to the Burnaby Hospital site.

The first floor of the new centre will house the two day programs that are used to teach life skills, assertiveness training, stress management and other issues for mental health consumers in the city.

The day programs will operate out of several large workshops that include a kitchen for teaching clients how to cook and a pottery room with kiln, plus arts and crafts programs. This side of the centre also includes an exercise room with two stationary, Schwinn recumbent cycles; a TV room with a new, big-screen television; and a dining area with a walkaround fireplace and a pool table. There is also an outside patio that includes a small covered area for clients who smoke.

The more challenging aspects of mental health care will be offered on the second floor of the centre. Here, the mental health team will have a 25-bed inpatient unit and three-bed crisis stabilization unit. These acute-care services are in addition to the emergency, after-hours psychiatric care that will continue to be offered at Burnaby Hospital's emergency department.

Besides the new paint - most of the walls have a mustard yellow colour with natural wood highlights - computers and furniture, Falode said his estimated 90 staff people, including nurses, social workers, psychologists, social workers, occupational therapists and psychiatrists, are glad to see improvements in the security standards at the new office.

"Now our area is very secure," he said. "No one can get in without being let in."

The centre will also house several other specialized mental health programs, including the five-person Geriatric Team, which does outreach, assessments and other work with senior-aged clients in the community and long-term care facilities.

The centre also has a community residential program, which oversees the contract for about 110 beds of supported semi- independent living operated by the Progressive Housing Society, plus five different group homes.

Other services provided by the Burnaby Mental Health Centre include: community rehabilitation services, which offers occupational therapists to clients needed short-term assistance; the Se-Cure program, which has one part-time staff person operating a self-cure program for anxiety sufferers; the co-ordinator of Burnaby's addiction services division; plus a single 'concurrent disorder' specialists who deals with some of the most difficult clients who have both a mental illness and drug abuse problem.

Falode said one of his favourite aspects of the new centre is that it allows the 25-bed in-patient acute care program to be located right inside a hospital.

"Normally you want these programs near a hospital," Falode said, noting that Burnaby typically sees about 400 person each year admitted to short-term psychiatric stays ranging anywhere from a few days to several weeks.

And while the Fraser Health Authority was criticized last year for closing the Lougheed area mental health centre, Falode is confident those issues have been satisfactorily resolved with the opening of the new central office at Burnaby Hospital.

"We closed the Lougheed office because it was no longer viable," he said. "it was opened in 1991 on the assumption that the population would grow there, and that didn't happen. t's unfortunate we had to close, but the clientele were not there."

Falode noted that each client of the Lougheed office was offered a choice of where to relocate, either to a similar centre in Coquitlam, the north Burnaby North office on Hastings Street, or to the new central office at Burnaby Hospital.

While a majority of clients do not have cars, Falode is confident that the new Burnaby Hospital centre will be accessible, particularly because it is just one bus ride away from the new Brentwood SkyTrain Station.

And of course, the real measure of the move will come Monday morning when the new offices open for the first time. ""there's going to be a lot of action here," Falode said.

For the first few weeks, Falode and his staff will be working out all the minor bugs that come with any office relocation, and come the early fall, probably sometime in September, the new Burnaby Mental Health Centre will host an open house for its clients and the public.