No more waiting for support

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Waiting six to nine months for anything is challenging and full of anticipation, but what if that time was spent suffering day in and day out?

For people seeking mental health counselling, six to nine months of waiting is hard to swallow. It's a problem that kept clinical psychologist Felicia Otchet up at night, and so she founded the Wait List Clinic in January 2012.

Otchet said it's a project that has been in the works for years. It took a lot of planning, research and development but she's come up with the perfect solution.

"It was an act of creativity ... there were a lot of undergraduate students who couldn't get any access to direct service training positions, and then a group of people who can't get immediate access to mental health services; to be able to meld those two things together seemed to be just an idea that really took off."

There is no one single 'point' to this program. It was designed to be an aid of many things: help decrease wait times, give students a learning opportunity at the only clinic of its kind in Canada, and reduce stigma surrounding mental illness.

This grabbed the interest of psychologist Dr. Bill Newby coordinator at the Wait List Clinic.

"It's extremely unconventional and that's part of the exciting part about it."

It hasn't been easy getting it off the ground. Otchet wrote many grant proposals and was finally successful. Each year the program has to find a new grant. This year Canada Post is supporting them.

"Ideally it would be great if we could have somebody who could offer ongoing support," says Otchet. "I nail-bite all summer wondering if we'll have funding for the fall."

This year the Wait List Clinic is the recipient of the Charity Ball proceeds at Western University. While the clinic is already funded for this calendar year, Otchet said she hopes to use the funds from Charity Ball to support them through the 2013/14 school year.

At this point the clinic accepts clients from the Canadian Mental Health Association London Middlesex. They are broadening their client base by preparing to receive clients from CMHA's partners, Watch and Search. Otchet is also looking into external agencies.

Student volunteers execute sessions at the clinic. They are in a room with a video camera. For confidentiality purposes, the cameras are never recording but are used only for oversight from the supervising psychologist. Halfway through the one-hour session students excuse themselves to debrief with the supervisor; this also gives the client a break.

Lenka Kriz, student volunteer from King's Univeristy, has gone through training and is awaiting her first session with a client.

"We're definitely going to be hearing some traumatic and upsetting stories, but the clinical psychologist is really helping us to kind of step back and really just listen to the clients. We're not there to be providing problem solving. And as much as it might be difficult for us to hear, I think it's a lot more difficult for them to experience."

"A lot of the questions are, 'My gosh! What should I say?'" said Newby. "And part of the job is to reassure them that their job is mainly to listen and to provide support. When we hear somebody who's struggling with something, we tend to want to jump in and solve the problem but of course the clients with whom they're working have been living with the problem for a long time. If it were easily solved, they would have solved it already."

Newby said for the most part, students are dealing with people who are just like them.

"Part of the purpose of the Wait List Clinic I think is to help us learn that the label does not make somebody not functional, it doesn't make them crazy."

In fact, a major component of the Wait List Clinic is the learning experience for both parties. "I think that often in health and mental health, students might have the opportunity to watch activities. Although, students describe when they volunteer they wind up doing more administrative activities…We train our students for the frontline," said Otchet.

Newby has already seen the benefits of the Wait List Clinic in just the short amount of time it has been open.

"We see clients who flourish given someone to talk to. Clients who begin to come out of themselves. Clients who feel more like they belong and I think that's part of the good. The other good that comes out of it I think comes to the student volunteers who get to know a population that I think we all ought to know more about and the disadvantaged among us to sort of de-stigmatize."

The Wait List Clinic runs on Monday and Tuesday evenings and can support up to 16 clients a night. Ideally, Otchet says they can follow a client from the time they are placed on the waiting list to the time they are placed into a program.

"The goal is to bridge that gap," said Otchet.

She said she has two hopes: "One of those hopes is that the need for wait list services decreases with time. I mean, I really do hope that mental health becomes more adequately funded and it is my sincere hope that we continue to get funding to enable this program to be ongoing."

Fanshawe and Western students can be involved in a number of ways aside from dealing directly with clients. There are research and fundraising opportunities with the program.