Mom opens youth mental health centre after struggle to get daughter treatment
Young people helping young people with mental health issues. That's one of the core ideas behind Stella's Place — a new, non-profit, mental health treatment centre that just opened its doors in Toronto.
Stella's Place serves teens and young adults — ages 16 to 29. And, according to its founder, it's the only centre in the city catering specifically to that age group.
Donna Green, and her daughter Stella Green Sanderson, tell The Current's Anna Maria Tremonti how the frustration of trying to get help led to the creation of Stella's Place.
"The goal of Stella's place was to create something that simply doesn't exist here for us in this country and may not exist even in the States," says Green who paid out of pocket for three years of private mental health care for her daughter in the U.S.
Green's daughter, Sanderson, was 16 when she started showing signs of anxiety and depression.
"I knew something was happening and didn't feel right," says Sanderson. School assignments were difficult to complete and eventually she says it was hard to go to school.
"I felt overwhelmed by all the deadlines and all of my commitments."
According to a survey by the Ontario University and College Health Association, 65 per cent of post-secondary students report experiencing overwhelming anxiety in the past year — and nearly half report feeling so depressed in the previous year that it was difficult to function.
Campus counselling groups say that they're struggling to meet the need and plagued by long wait times.
Stella's Place aims to provide fulsome care for this under-serviced age group by offering not only a full assessment but a full menu of programs — such as yoga and fitness, eating properly, mindful-based practices along with traditional therapies, one-on-one therapy and psychiatry.
Green says the other service that Stella's place provides is helping kids get back on track either by continuing education from where they left of, or helping youth navigate the system to find a job.
Stella's Place is set up as a storefront cafe to provide a place that peers feel welcome in.
"We've take out the stigma of a terrible, frightening, you know, institutional environment which we know from our research that young adult's don't life, don't go to and don't stay with," says Green.
After three years of treatment in the States, Sanderson said coming back she had no community, no network. If Stella's place existed, she tells Tremonti it would have been pivotal.
"I would have been able to meet new people in a supportive way, and hang out in like a familiar, comfortable setting. And from there I would have been able to maybe get back into the community more comfortably."
Listen to the full conversation at the top of this web post.
This segment was produced by The Current's Willow Smith and Sujata Berry.