Wait Times for Mental Health Services

Wait times for appointments with each of the five Community Mental Health Teams within the Capital District Mental Health Program are posted here.

These reports state that the Standards for Mental Health Services in Nova Scotia indicate:

• urgent/rapid follow up clients should be seen within 7 days (actually 5 working days);
• semi-urgent clients should be seen within 28 days (semi-urgent is not defined in the Standards, nor is the 28-day wait time); and
• regular clients should be seen within 90 days.

Wow, with three month wait times, I'm glad that I have always been an urgent client. I wonder how one qualifies to be a 'regular client'?

Because of the unfortunate stigma associated with mental illness, I would think that those of us with enough courage to access mental health services deserve to be treated as either an urgent or a semi-urgent client - at least for the first appointment.

David Rodenhiser, a columnist with the Halifax Daily News, has written a nice opinion piece entitled: A collision course. An ailing mental-health system results in more troubled people in conflict with the law. Among numerous important issues that he addresses, Mr. Rodenhiser questions the 18-day wait times (in August 2006) for those with urgent mental-health problems as reported by Mental Health Services, Bedford/Sackville.