FOCUS ON YOUTH DISORDERS

A two-day conference in Kelowna last week on concurrent disorders -
addictions and mental illness - attracted 190 delegates.

Sponsored by Interior Health's Mental Health and Addictions Services,
the conference focused on education and training to improve services
for youth in the region.

The two-day conference was well attended by staff working across the
field of mental health and addictions from IHA, doctors,
psychiatrists, Ministry for Children and Families, RCMP, school-based
prevention counsellors and teaching staff, says Janet James, Youth
Addictions Strategy Co-ordinator.

One of the keynote speakers, Gloria Chaim, is currently the deputy
clinical director of the Child Youth and Family Program at the Centre
for Addiction and Mental Health in Toronto.

In the field for more than 20 years, Chaim's primary focus is on
integrating addiction and mental health initiatives and development of
services for families.

In an interview prior to the conference, Chaim said there is a
particularly high concurrence between substance use and mental health
problems in youth. but they often remain undiagnosed.

"If someone seems to be depressed and you start treating them, and you
never ask about the use of drugs or alcohol in their lives, you may
never know," she said, stressing the importance of early diagnosis. "A
lot of times, what we see at first glance is not the whole picture."

Many of the services available today are set up for a particular
issue, she said.

But people in the field are beginning to become more aware of the
notion of concurrent disorders.

"Either we provide more holistic service, or we get good at
collaborating so they're (patients) not bouncing back and forth," she
said. "The more we can pull together across services... the more we
can be creative, the more flexible we are, the more we take service to
them, the better job we can do."

Meanwhile, James says her sense of the conference was that
participants got a lot of useful, helpful information.

Her job now, she says, is to help participants put what they've
learned into practice.

The provincial government recently announced $6 million in annual
youth addictions funding for the six health authorities across the
province with almost $900,000 going to Interior Health.?

The funding will result in additional treatment options for B.C.'s
addicted youth.