Teen mental health centre to open Monday in Montreal

The Montreal Children's Hospital will inaugurate a specialized mental health centre for teens, called SPOT Montreal, on Monday to support 1,000 adolescents annually who have contemplated or attempted suicide.

The goal of SPOT Montreal is to offer an alternative to hospitalization that will allow teens to continue to attend school and pursue other activities.

Up to 12 weeks of intensive, individualized therapy will be offered to help alleviate the suicidal crisis and provide teens with techniques to help manage psychological distress.

The centre will also help patients and their families make a smooth transition to community services for ongoing support.

The Montreal Children's Hospital notes that since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, distress in children and adolescents has increased at an alarming rate.

Between 2020 and 2021, the number of young people and their families who turned to the hospital's emergency department for psychosocial and psychological problems jumped by 35 per cent.

In a report released in late January, the Quebec Institute of Public Health (INSPQ) found that the number of teenage girls who visited Quebec's emergency departments after attempting suicide increased by 23 per cent in 2021.

The Montreal Children's Hospital added that the average wait time for community mental health services is six months.

SPOT Montreal aims to assess its young patients within 72 hours of referral from the hospital's emergency department specialists.

The cost to design and build SPOT Montreal and provide its range of services is $12 million over ten years.

In six months, the Montreal Children's Hospital Foundation has raised $12 million for the centre.

-- This report by The Canadian Press was first published in French on March 18, 2022.