The Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at the Montreal Children’s Hospital would like to express its sincere gratitude to the McGill University Health Centre and its community of donors for their invaluable support in establishing SPOT, the Montreal Children’s Hospital’s specialized adolescent mental health centre, in early 2022. Our centre’s nomination for the Hippocrates Award reflects our team’s dedication to innovating and transforming mental health care and social services for children, adolescents, and their families.
Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, the demand for mental health care among children and adolescents was steadily increasing. Emergency room visits due to self-harm, particularly among young women, rose significantly between 1989 and 2019 (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention). The pandemic has exacerbated these challenges by exposing young people to unprecedented stressors, including those who had never previously experienced mental health issues, thereby increasing the need for mental health support. In Montreal, there was a 70% increase in emergency room visits for mental health issues between 2020 and 2021 (Beaudry, 2022), and hospital admissions due to suicidal ideation, self-harm, anxiety, and substance abuse have doubled since the start of the pandemic (Children’s Healthcare Canada, 2022). Anxiety and depression are among the most common reasons why children and youth seek services, particularly those facing social adversity.
Recognizing that traditional models of care in emergency departments and hospitals are insufficient to address these modern challenges, SPOT was created to provide innovative services to young people and their families. Youth who present to the emergency department at the Montreal Children’s Hospital or who are briefly hospitalized in the psychiatric ward for suicidal crises are referred to SPOT for rapid crisis intervention. Our multidisciplinary team of child psychiatrists, nurses, and social workers collaborates to provide culturally and socially appropriate crisis assessments and interventions tailored to the patients’ circumstances. We focus on supporting young people and families, teaching coping skills, and establishing partnerships with community care providers to ensure continuity of care and improve mental health outcomes.
Our team remains committed to developing new approaches to mental health care. We aim to reduce emergency room overcrowding by providing direct access to SPOT for youth in suicidal crisis through referrals from our consulting psychiatrists working with partner CLSCs. This collaborative model holds great promise for improving the mental health and well-being of youth, and it demonstrates our commitment to realizing the unique potential of every young person we serve.
