Review Article
Sts’ailes Mental Wellness Clinic: Description of the First 15 Months of a Service Development Journey on a St’olo First Nation in British Columbia, Canada
Benning TB1*, Hamilton M2, Isomura T3,4, Kuperis S3, Mussell B5, Noizadan S2 and Peters V51Maple Ridge Mental Health Centre, British Columbia, Canada
2Sts’ailes Health and Family Services, Canada
3Department of Mental Health and Substance Use, Fraser Health, Canada
4Sherbrook Centre, Royal Columbian Hospital, New Westminster, Canada
5Sal’I’shan institute, Chilliwack, Canada
- *Corresponding Author:
- Tony B Benning
Consultant Psychiatrist, Maple Ridge Mental Health Centre, Dewdney Trunk Road
Maple Ridge, 500 22470, British Columbia, V2X 5Z5, Canada
Tel: 604-476-7165
Fax: 604-476-7199
E-mail: tony.benning@fraserhealth.ca
Received date: May 17, 2017; Accepted date: June 05, 2017; Published date: June 10, 2017
Citation: Benning TB, Hamilton M, Isomura T, Kuperis S, Mussell B, et al. (2017) Sts’ailes Mental Wellness Clinic: Description of the First 15 Months of a Service Development Journey on a St’olo First Nation in British Columbia, Canada. J Community Med Health Educ 7:525. doi:10.4172/2161-0711.1000525
Copyright: © 2017 Benning TB, et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Abstract
The Sts’ailes community is a First Nation close to Chilliwack in British Columbia, Canada where a mental wellness clinic was launched in January 2015. Presented here, in addition to description of the development and structure of the clinic are the sources of referral, demographics, diagnoses and other characteristics of all patients seen over a 15 month period (January 2015 to April 2016). By way of context, the paper begins with an overview of the cultural and historical background of Sts’ailes. It then describes the health services that were in existence at Sts’ailes prior to the mental wellness clinic as well as the values that were held to be important for the mental wellness clinic to embody. Emphasized in this paper too is the fact that a significant time period of consultation and relation-building as well as organizational commitment between First Nations representatives as well as representatives of the local health authority preceded the inception of the clinic.