A unit once considered one of the IWK Health Centre’s most dismal has been dramatically updated and relocated.
Officials at the Halifax children’s hospital say the Garron Centre for Child and Adolescent Mental Health is state-of-the-art and will serve children and youth with severe mental illness.
The purple ribbon of mental health stigma was cut on Friday. The new mental health unit will open next week.
“This place is beautiful, like when I first entered four south, I was a little scared because it looked kind of run down,” says former patient Olivia Burke. “It’s a good place to go for help, but it just really doesn’t have that welcoming effect - this place does.”
Burke, 18, has come a long way after being diagnosed with psychosis two years ago. At the time, she was admitted to the IWK’s Teen Mental Crisis Unit, four south.
“The kids might have a more positive outlook if they were in a place like this, rather than feeling like they’re locked down, like on four south. This sort of feels like an apartment,” says Burke of the new unit.
The Garron Centre for Child and Adolescent Mental Health was made possible by $15 million in generous donations, $5 million of which came from Myron and Berna Garron.
“It just happened that I got to meet people at the IWK and then one thing led to another and here we are today,” says philanthropist Myron Garron.
In addition to being a warm and inviting space, the $15-million unit has 18 patient rooms - the same number as before - but now includes a place where families can stay.
“Now they can say, ‘we have a wonderful place for you to go’ and the whole family is admitted here if they want to stay with their child. There are four rooms with beds, there’s a family unit,” says Anne McGuire, president and CEO of the IWK Health Centre.
Burke’s mother Shauna says she is grateful for the donations to mental health.
“It’s always been so underground and not talked about and stigma and that and it’s so unfair, because the people that need these services, they’re the most wonderful people ever,” says Shauna McKay-Burke.
Dr. Kathleen Pajer, chief of psychiatry, says the unit will provide treatment for conditions such as psychosis, depression, bipolar disorder and obsessive compulsive disorder in children and teens.
It will welcome its first patients next week.
With files from CTV Atlantic's Gena Holley and The Canadian Press
