Peterborough grapples with mental health load

PETERBOROUGH, Ont. – The mental health crisis response unit at the Peterborough Regional Health Centre has experienced a 50 percent increase in caseloads while the hospital’s psychiatric intensive care unit has been overcapacity for 400 straight days. That’s what Peterborough-Kawartha MP Michelle Ferreri (pictured) learned after touring the Peterborough hospital this month with hospital president and chief executive officer Dr. Lynn Mikula.

“They have amazing people working at PRHC, but they know how challenging the wait times are,” Ferreri said. “They know how challenging healthcare is across the country.”

Peterborough Regional Health Centre serves a catchment area of almost 300,000 people.

“What I’ve heard from first responders and people working on the front lines that are dealing with mental health and addictions, is there is still nowhere for people to go to access timely treatment and recovery,” Ferreri said. “There’s long wait-list or just not enough locations to meet demand.”

Ferreri stated PRHC needs more capacity to address the higher demand and to help take some of the strain off healthcare workers.

“My job as a representative on a federal level is to ensure that I’m helping get the access to resources that we need,” she said. “I think access to mental health resources, addiction and treatment and recovery are a massive issue in this country.”

Ferreri said she will be continuing to follow up with PRHC about capacity issues. She noted that despite caseload increases, PRHC has still had tremendous successes with their eating disorder clinic.

“We saw a massive increase in children with eating disorders, especially during COVID,” she said. “So, they’ve had a really successful clinic that should be celebrated.”

While the provincial government oversees Ontario’s hospitals, the federal government needs to address the underlying reasons for the growing mental health crisis in Canada, Ferreri said.

“There is a direct correlation to an increase in mental health issues and the state of our economy. On Wednesday, our interest rates went up yet again, and this puts a lot of stress on families and consequently children,” she said.

“When parents are very stressed about how to pay the bills, how they’re going to afford housing, how they’re going to afford groceries, or how they’re going to make mortgage payments that have gone up yet again; that stress impacts the child.”

Ferreri noted children’s mental health is crucial to Canada.

“When we have mentally healthy children, we get mentally healthy adults, it’s the best investment we can make,” she said.