Canadian Mental Health Services hosts weekly walk-in counselling clinics

Nancy Hamilton is community service manager with CMHS. She supervises the walk-in clinics. Photo by Graham Whittaker, QNet News

By Graham Whittaker

Children’s Mental Health Services is hosting weekly walk-in clinics where anyone under the age of 18 can receive free counselling services.

They run year round with one clinic in Belleville on Wednesdays and a second in Trenton on Thursdays.

In Belleville there are two workers seeing patients in the clinic and in Trenton there is only one.

The agency provides support to children and youth who are struggling with anything from mood disorders to domestic or school conflicts like bullying or various safety issues in the environment.

“Whether it’s that the sadness has gotten too big or the anxiety has been too much for them to handle, some people come in because there’s a lot of parental conflict or because there’s been a separation or divorce and that has an effect on how the youth is doing,” said Nancy Hamilton, community services manager with CMHS.

Hamilton says that people should use their own judgment when it comes to deciding to seek out support.

“Everybody’s going to have their own sense of when something has been too big for them to manage. It’s different for different people,” she said. “If what is happening is something that is really interfering with somebodies ability to manage their lives in different areas, than that’s when it’s really time to seek out support.”

The clinic also welcomes parents who want to come in by themselves to receive some guidance on how they can effectively support their struggling child.

“Sometimes parents come in without their kids and they just want some sort of consultation and advice about how to do things,” she said. “We’ve also had grandparents come in because they know their grandchild is struggling and want to figure out how they support the grandchild and the parent around receiving some services.”

While they are equipped to support a wide variety of issues, Hamilton says that the clinic is not meant for anyone in a crisis situation and that if there is any imminent threat to someone’s safety they go to the hospital instead.

“For kids 15 and under, our intake service would provide support and assistance for somebody in that level of crisis if they didn’t need to go to the hospital. For any youth 16 and up, they would go to the hospital crisis centre. If it’s during the daytime they don’t need to go through the emergency room, they just go to the crisis service at the hospital directly.”

The clinics function as a way for patients to break the ice with the agency and have a clinician assigned to them if further support is needed.

“Usually what happens is that there are maybe 40-50% of the people who only use the one session,” she said. “Then other people who come will actually ask for a referral and if they aren’t on our wait list, they will arrange for a referral to our agency.”

However, patients are more than welcome to come back to future walk-in clinics while they are on the waitlist if they need to.

Hamilton says people seeking to use the service are welcome to come in at 11 a.m. to fill out the required paperwork and then sessions will take place from noon until 6 p.m.

“So as people walk in they will, as soon as a worker is available, that worker would meet with them for about approximately an hour or an hour and a half depending how long the process takes,” she said.

If you’re looking for more information or support from CMHS, call 613-966-3100 or visit their office at 3 Applewood Dr. Suite 300.