Black Bata Black Art26:30Give patients with mental health emergency
The Ottawa Montfort hospital sees twice the patients for mental health emergencies as the average ontarium. And as this number increased in recent years, the daily environment of the waiting room of the emergency room, chaotic, noisy and excessive, became an increasing trigger, which makes anguished patients fleeing or hurting themselves or others. In the new Mental Health Emergency Zone just next to the emergency room, everything has been designed for decallation, and personnel and patients are seeing dramatic results.
It is even more agitated than usual at the Montfort hospital in Ottawa on Wednesday afternoon.
“We have many patients waiting to be able to feel pressure only in the atmosphere,” said Dr. Kristine Levesque, deputy director of the hospital personnel and head of psychiatry.
This pressurized atmosphere is on the course of the course in waiting rooms of the emergency room, since more than 16 million Canadians who were found in one in 2024-2025 well know.
But when mild enters a set of double doors right next to the main emergency room, it is a completely different environment.
Suddenly, it is a quiet oasis with soft music, lights that can be attenuated, comfortable bean bag chairs and a water cooler. There is a bathroom with shower and a cell cargo locker. A psychiatric nurse is there 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, to make an initial evaluation and decalize anguished patients, all the time collecting valuable information for doctors in the emergency room.
Opened in November 2024, the Montfort Hospital Mental Health Emergency Zone (MHEZ) is specially designed to help stabilize patients in a mental health crisis, which makes the emergency room safer for them, other patients and health workers.
The hospital sees more than the number of mental health emergency patients than the provincial average: eight percent of all patients with ER versus four percent in the rest of the ontarium.
Located in the Rideau-Vanier neighborhood of Ottawa, near several center shelters, the area has rates higher than the average poverty and addiction. Montfort often sees patients suffering from the use of paired substances with mental health problems.
“We are where people or where the police or paramedics will bring patients for mental health,” said Levesque.
However, the increase that Montfort has seen in patients who experience psychiatric or mental health emergencies, together with the use and addiction of substances, is a Canadian trend in the HRES of the hospital from the Covid-19 Pandemia, said Marion Cooper, president of the Canadian Mental Health Association (CMHA).
The MHEZ is “all about construction capacity,” Cooper said. “And I think that’s where we need all our emergency departments to be.”
Stimulating for all wrong reasons
In general, hospital emergency departments are not designed for mental health patients, “Cooper said.
“[ERs] They are very chaotic: they are often noisy, they are overestimulants and can really worsen symptoms such as anxiety or paranoia or even suicidal ideation. So, when the environment is really amplifying those challenges, we know that we must do better. “
For mild, the impulse to make it better was stimulated by two particularly terrible events that occurred in recent years.
In one case, a patient died from suicide in the emergency room, which caused the investigation of a coroner. In another, a psychiatrist was subject to an attempt to sexual aggression by a patient, one of the many acts of aggression of the patient who mild said that the members of his staff experience each year.
Design insurance
The new mental health emergency zone is designed to avoid incidents like these in the pass.
When the attempt of sexual assault occurred, “the door did not have a spring to close automatically,” said Levesque. After the psychiatrist came out to make a call from the nursing station, the patient entered the room. The staff intervened quickly, but the event was left with mild.
In addition to better door closure mechanisms, there are now sensors that shoot if a patient tries to wrap something around the door to strangle. All hooks for hanging bags or coats are anti-bright, so nothing can be tied to them.
If the patient approaches himself in a treatment room, staff can turn the door mechanism to open in the opposite way. The furniture is too heavy to be lifted. And there are cameras in all rooms, so the new devout psychiatric nurse can see everyone at all times.
Without government funds, the new area is the result of a fundraising campaign of $ 2 million from the Montfort Hospital Foundation, an effort that was expected to take 18 months, but instead it took 18 weeks.
Amsatou Bah has been a psychiatric nurse in Montfort for five years, and said that the new area is helping her to do her job better.
“It’s peaceful and quiet, which means I can talk to patients more easily without room noise Black Bata Black ArtDr. Brian Goldman.
Mental health usually ‘is not the priority’ in ERS
Rick, 66, fell into a depressive episode last spring (we are using Rick’s name only for privacy reasons). He and his wife went to the Montfort Emergency Room, where they were quickly directed to the mental health emergency zone, which said it was a pleasant surprise.
It was “a private, spacious, clean, new, segregated, safe area,” Rick said. “We were able to relax and not have to worry about any of the other patients.”
The experience exceeded their expectations, which had established themselves quite low from a lifetime of experience, Rick said.
In the last 50 years, he has made many ER visits with his brother, who has schizophrenia. Those experiences left him with the impression that mental health “is not priority,” Rick said.
But in Montfort, Rick saw the psychiatric nurse immediately, followed 20 minutes later by a doctor from the emergency room, who sent him to a service psychiatrist. That never happened in his brother’s experience, Rick said.
Rick spent a couple of weeks in treatment in the 60 -bed mental health unit of the hospital before being discharged, where he is going well, Levesque said.
A 2 -way benefit
The decallation of anguished patients in a devout area also helps personnel. As in hospitals around the world, violent incidents that affect Montfort staff had constantly increased since 2020.
The data shared with CBC Radio shows that between April 2024 and March 2025, the hospital reversed the trend for the first time in five years, with 30 % less incidents compared to the previous year.
Six months later, it is 50 percent less, without incidents throughout the hospital during the months of May, June and August.
Before the area opened in November 2024, “people did not want to come to work, they felt that they were taking unnecessary risks,” said Levesque, “and I no longer feel that this was the case.”
Cooper said that initiatives such as Montfort’s mental health emergency zone are not new, but that more approaches like these are encouraged.
She points to the Winnipeg crisis response center, an independent installation 24/7 was inaugurated in 2013 to divert the mental health emergencies of the ERs of the city.
“We have seen other examples arise throughout the years that have really responded to that need,” said Cooper, from a “mental health care system that supports people in an informed manner of trauma.”
But these approaches should be seen throughout the country, Cooper said, and not only in urban centers.
“Hospitals in rural and northern communities, where there are fewer resources, can seek to guarantee that there is access to the support of psychiatric nursing, support between pairs or family support resources.”
Hospitals tend to see patients in the mental health crisis more frequently at night or night, Cooper said. “Maybe I can’t pay psychiatric attention 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, but a night shift can be allowed.”
The need for a directed or specialized cancer emergency treatment would not be questioned, he said.
“We need to have care standards for psychiatric and mental health crises.”
