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www.insideHALTON.com | OAKVILLE BEAVER | Thursday, July 21, 2016 | 26 Tackling long waits for mental health, addiction services by Julia Le Oakville Beaver Staff Health "Connected to your Community" Brynne Wrigley has been battling anxiety and depression on and off since she was a teenager. The 30-year-old Halton resident said she recalls feeling the roller coaster of emotion as she struggled with schoolwork, home life and moving to a new city. "Leaving all my friends behind was quite traumatic for me," she said. "Looking back, it wasn't as traumatic as some of the other things I've been through, but I was very young and didn't know how to absorb it all." Although she saw school counsellors during that difficult period, she said she still felt alone and wasn't sure how to deal with her feelings. "The dialogue wasn't really there. No one really talked about that type of thing back then," said Wrigley, who said she got through a few more rough patches over the years before connecting with the support she needed. Last year, as feelings of anxiety and depression re-surfaced, she turned to her family doctor who referred her to a counselling service, but she had to wait months to see a counsellor. "It was frustrating," Wrigley said, admitting she called the service weekly to check on her status. "I had to wait 10 weeks and during that time I was in rough shape." Wrigley isn't alone when it comes to the long wait times for mental health and addiction services in Halton. According to the one-Link program -- a single referral access point to 10 mental health and addictions service-providers funded by the Mississauga Halton Local Health Integration Network (LHIN) -- the need for services far exceeds the demand of available resources, in Halton, and across Ontario. It can take days, weeks or months, depending on the type of care you need, said Zoe Gordon, who manages one-Link at Halton Healthcare. "Most systems are based on waitlists just by virtue of the volumes," she said, noting one-Link accepts referrals Brynne Wrigley from primary-care physicians, who either practice in or whose patient lives in Mississauga, Oakville, southwest Etobicoke, Milton or Georgetown. It also takes referrals from the Canadian Mental Health Association Halton Region branch (CMHA-HRB). "On average, it takes 20 business days for us to be able to make contact just based on those referrals," said Gordon, noting staff is constantly trying to improve wait times. "We see about 70 new referrals a day." One-Link began in 2014 and provides screening of clients to match them with the service they need. It also has service coordinators and peer mentors with limited addiction and mental health experience who, can provide support and "most importantly, hope, while they wait for an intake appointment to a more robust service delivery," said Gordon. That interim support may be a follow-up phone call to check in with a person to see how they are doing. "We find a high majority of our referrals come from people who are expressing symptoms related to anxiety and also depression and people don't naturally know how to cope with those feelings, especially if they're new or if they come on suddenly," she said. "So our team is well-equipped to give people some of those skills and strategies to help with their own self-management while they wait for higher, intense professionals to be able to do more of that in-depth work or prescribe medication or whatever else they may need." Often s, one-Link refers people to the CMHA-HRB's free walk-in counselling, she added, noting about 80 per cent of people who call are encouraged to self-refer themselves to CMHA-HRB. "It's an excellence resource and our feedback has been very positive that it provides people with the support when and where they need them and it gives the autonomy of choice for the person," said Gordon. CMHA-HRB has been running the free walk-in counselling service for two years and has provided counselling to more than 300 people, 175 since the start of 2016. To help address the long waits for mental health and addiction services across Halton, CMHA-HRB has plans to expand its free walk-in counselling service, currently offered in Oakville, to other parts of the region, including Burlington, Milton, and Georgetown. see Canadian on p.27 Thank you to all of the wonderful sponsors, volunteers and attendees for making this year's OTMH Sunset Cinema a fabulous event! Your support helped raise $22,000 to fund essential medical equipment for Oakville Trafalgar Memorial Hospital. Sponsored By