Durham residents can soon access enhanced mental health and addiction care through a new collaboration involving South Bruce Grey Health Centre (SBGHC), Brightshores Health System, and CMHA Grey Bruce.
SBGHC President and CEO Nancy Shaw called the initiative pretty exciting, considering the fact that access to mental health services has been limited throughout their organization.
"The services will include mental health and addiction, walk-in clinic, rapid access addiction management clinic, family support worker group services, including social recreation, Clozapine clinic, counseling services and psychiatrist clinics," she explained.
Shaw added that access to care is extremely important to local communities.
"Access to mental health and addictions care is essential for the health and wellbeing of our communities," said Shaw. "We are excited for this opportunity to collaborate with our local health system partners to enhance access to care for this specialized service."
Brightshores Director of Mental Health and Addictions Services Naomi Vodden said it will make a big difference for clients' comfort and care.
"Brightshores and CMHA work together to provide mental health and addictions care across Grey Bruce," she said. "Having a location in Durham is an asset to our care delivery. This collaboration with SBGHC will improve the support that we provide to our communities through outpatient mental health and addiction care."
"I think we've seen just really throughout Grey Bruce that there is a need for extended mental health and addiction services to provide people with service where they live," Vodden explained. "Our most disadvantaged clients, the ones that need mental health and addiction services, as well as others, may experience other service inequities and maybe don't have access to transportation. So we're really just trying to spread our services, really across all of Grey Bruce."
The collaboration is grounded in a patient-first, team-based approach to care, ensuring accessible and effective support for the community.
CMHA Grey Bruce CEO Steve Musehl said the new services will fill a void in the region.
"The need, especially in a lot of our smaller rural communities, is growing quickly down in that Durham corridor, and further east you have the Flesherton and Dundalk area," Musehl pointed out. "Southeast Grey County certainly is growing in population really quickly, and our services there are needed very, very imminently."
He added that the need for both mental health services and addiction services is growing at a immensely quick rate, and they are trying to keep up as best they can.
Staff are currently settling in to the new space in Durham, and they expect services to be up and running in the New Year.
To access these services practitioners, family members or individuals can call the Brightshores Mental Health and Addictions Navigation Line at 519-376-3303 or submit a referral form.
Referral forms are available on the Brightshores website.
