Having her own shower and a bright, cheery room mean the world to her
April 29, 2011
Megan Ogilvie
HEALTH REPORTER
When Angela Foot was told she could benefit from in-patient care at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, her first response was to refuse the help emphatically.
The young woman, who was struggling with bipolar disorder, had completed two months of day treatment at the centre’s Mood and Anxiety Inpatient Unit (MAUI) and was afraid to spend four consecutive weeks in the cramped space.
Its cinderblock walls, stuffy, small rooms and institutional feel were an overwhelming deterrent, even though she knew she needed help to overcome her suicidal thoughts.
But Foot’s doctor assuaged her fears by explaining she would be among the first patients to be treated in the Alternate Inpatient Milieu Program, or AIM, which is housed in three four-storey, glass-and-brick buildings on the west end of the property.
Foot learned the space, open to patients since November 2008, was bright and open, that she would share a floor with just five other patients, and she would have her own bedroom and her own bathroom.
Foot accepted the treatment.
“I probably would have refused without a bathroom,” says Foot, now 37 years old and healthy.
Formerly a successful director of marketing and sales for a software company, Foot was diagnosed with bi-polar disorder when she was 32.
When she came to CAMH for treatment, first as an out-patient in 2006, and then as an in-patient in 2008, Foot was isolated, suicidal and had extended manic periods where she could not sleep for weeks.
It sounds like a silly obstacle, but a bathroom, a private room and welcoming surroundings can make the difference in helping patients decide to seek mental health treatment, say clinicians and staff.
Removing the institutional atmosphere, they say, encourages people to come for help and reduces the stigma that still lingers.
Foot adds a different perspective: “When you are so ill, the proximity to a shower is a really big thing. Seeing it from the bed and knowing it’s just six steps away really helps.”
While grateful for the treatment she received at MAUI in 2006, Foot shivers when she recalls its warren of rooms, narrow, maze-like hallways and stifling setting.
“There is a real sense of disorientation and mayhem there,” she says. “It’s loud and disorientating. It smells like a closed-off environment.”
On a recent spring day, Foot wanders the halls on the fifth floor of MAUI. Cheery, electric green paint does little to hide the inhospitable cinderblock walls. The temperature is uncomfortably warm. It feels like an out-of-date hospital.
Minutes later, Foot smiles as she walks into the McCain Building, which houses AIM and where she spent four weeks in 2008. The entrance is bright and airy. The rooms are spacious and have broad windows. It feels like a friend’s condo.
One of the things Foot liked most about her time at AIM was being able to walk down White Squirrel Way and along bustling Queen St. W. for an afternoon stroll.
“It allows you, literally, to feel like you are not so nuts,” she says, sitting in a sunlit window bay on the second floor of the McCain Building. “I could walk down to Queen Street and see streetcars and people-watch and see normal things, like people putting money in parking meters. I could go for coffee. ... It felt a little bit like university.”
Patients are allowed to bring their bedding and artwork to make the light-walled rooms feel like home. Foot brought a fluffy white duvet and a stack of photos.
“It becomes your own little oasis,” she says. “This place gave me a month to myself to work on me, to work on getting better.”
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