Krista Couture
Patient Care Manager, Child & Adolescent
St. Joseph’s Health Centre
I’ll never forget Cory, a teenager who came to St. Joe’s during one of the lowest moments of their life. Cory was going through many big changes, including gender identity. Cory uses the pronouns they/their. Cory’s family and friends didn’t understand or support them. They felt incredibly alone, afraid and hopeless. I remember thinking to myself; what can we do to help Cory? After spending a few months with my team at St. Joe’s, they got to a more stable place. My team spent a lot of time working through some of the distressing thoughts and behaviors they were having, and I was relieved to see them gradually recover.
I have to say, that in my all my years working at St. Joe’s – and it’s been nearly 20 – one thing never changes. And that’s the healing power of community – a community that you make possible every day.
I’m the Patient Care Manager at St. Joe’s, with a focus in youth mental health. I know first-hand the key role that community plays in a person’s path to recovery and healing. I also live in the west-end, and can say from experience, that it’s a very special community.
A big part of my job is helping patients feel secure enough to take the first steps toward recovery – and they can’t take that leap alone.
Will you stand up for mental health in the west end right now? You may not know it, but our community has the highest concentration of mental health challenges in Toronto.
Your donation today will support our greatest community healthcare needs – like new patient spaces to support your neighbours in a mental health crisis.
Your donation today will help build a new patient space called a step-down unit. This innovative space is designed to help bridge a big gap between our Psychiatric Intensive Care Unit – where people come in a crisis – and our main inpatient mental health unit – where they continue to recover after that crisis is managed.
Those who are admitted to our six-bed Psychiatric Intensive Care Unit (PICU) are in an emergency. They may be at risk of harming themselves or others. In the PICU, those in our care have around-the-clock staff support to help them through their crisis, in a small and intimate environment.
When they’re ready, they move to a space that can offer them longer-term care. But with the way things are now, that next space is our 29-bed inpatient unit. And often, going from the PICU to this larger unit is a real shock to the system.
Many feel over-exposed in this big area. I regularly hear from our clients, especially younger females, about how afraid they feel going into our larger psychiatric unit, which has both men and women of all ages. Unfortunately, they often regress in their recovery as a result, needing to go back to the PICU. This means a much longer recovery time, which leads to poorer health outcomes for those who are most vulnerable.
Your donation today will help fund our west-end community’s most urgent healthcare needs, like creating a new psychiatric step-down unit to fill this gap in care.
This new space will lead to better health outcomes for all of your neighbours who desperately need help in a mental health crisis. as a donor to St. Joe’s, you’ve already had a huge impact on the mental health of your west-end neighbours. For example, you helped build the new RBC Mental Health Short Stay and Transitional Age Youth Unit.
A few years later, Cory needed some more help. And even though they moved out of the west-end by that time, they still came right back to St. Joe’s. They told me they couldn’t imagine recovering anywhere else because they felt so connected to the community of care they found here. Thanks to you, patients like Cory can get another chance at healing and belonging, through the power of our incredible west-end community here at St. Joe’s.