Just a 1½ years after opening, the Red Fish Healing Centre for Mental Health and Addiction in Coquitlam has a success rate of nine in 10 patients getting better from a psychiatric point of view, according to a study done by Health Canada.
Yet Red Fish only takes patients for whom all previous treatment attempts have failed.
The federal survey examined patients before and after treatment stays at Red Fish and found its treatment is overwhelmingly successful, said Dr. Nick Mathew, an addiction and forensic psychiatrist who is medical director of complex mental-health and substance-use services at Red Fish.
“It’s the biggest study on concurrent disorders done anywhere on planet Earth,” he said. “If you look at Red Fish in general, 92 per cent of our patients get better from a psychiatric point of view.” For substance-use disorders, that number is 76 per cent. For alcohol-use disorder, 90 per cent of patients improved.
“Patients who haven’t done well anywhere else in the province are coming here and the vast majority of them are getting better,” Mathew said.
But you can’t just knock on the door and be admitted: The one-of-a-kind care centre doesn’t accept drop-ins, patients need to be referred to the centre by their local health authority.
Red Fish’s clients — people with several severe disorders at the same time, who have exhausted other treatment options for mental health and substance use — come from all over the province.
“I think some of those people (from the camp) do end up winding up here,” said Mathew during a tour of Red Fish.
“But the way people get into Red Fish is they have to meet the admission criteria, their home health authority has their own list of people and prioritizes who gets into the beds at Red Fish.
“Something that makes Red Fish unique is almost all the patients coming in have had to have failed all the addiction and psychiatric treatments in their home health authority, the’ve failed everywhere else.”
The model has attracted interest from around the world, said Mathew, who has attended conferences around the globe to explain Red Fish’s approach.
As an example, using the Fraser Health Authority and the 1.9 million people in its area of coverage from Burnaby to Boston Bar, you would work in collaboration with your health-care professional or community support team to complete and submit a referral package to Fraser Health, a Fraser authority official said.
“If Fraser Health determines a person would benefit from the services provided at Red Fish, we forward the referral to the site for consideration,” he said.
The referral package is available online to health-care and community services staff who would like a client or patient to get treatment at Red Fish.
Red Fish has 105 beds and is filled to capacity, with about 350 clients rolling through every year and staying an average of five to nine months.
The centre, built in conjunction with the Kwikwetlem First Nation on the grounds of the old 900-bed Riverview Hospital, cost $350 million and costs about $40 million a year to run, Jennifer Whiteside, the minister of mental health and addictions, said.
After Riverview’s closure in 2012, former residents accounted for 10 per cent of the Downtown Eastside’s population of 18,500, Mathew said.
About 60 per cent of the clients at Red Fish are there involuntarily, being forcibly treated under the Mental Health Act.
Whether there against their will or voluntarily, clients each have their own bedroom, bathroom, and patio. There is a gym, an art and music therapy, a voucher program that rewards good attendance at classes, and the hummingbird room where healing circles and smudges take place.
“We’re taking people who have failed everywhere else and we’re bringing them here,” Mathew said. “There are probably about 20 addiction psychiatrists in the whole province and 10 of them work here.”
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