'No canned program': Mental health and addiction treatment centre set to expand in Moose Jaw

A mental health and addiction treatment centre located in Moose Jaw is set to double its beds in the coming months.

Alliance Health, which runs an in-patient residential centre, opened a 17-bed facility in August.

“We should have 34 beds in the next two to three months,” Dr. Mark Lemstra, CEO of Alliance Health, said. From there, he hopes to open more beds in Saskatoon.

Lemstra was inspired to start the treatment facility due to his personal life. Two of his brothers died from their own challenges with mental health and addiction.

“There were two different brothers and that helped me decide on the focus of the centre,” Lemstra said.

“My one brother was a stereotypical person that abused drugs and alcohol. He was homeless most of his life and he died on the street. It’s hard to envision treatment programs helping people immediately when they’re so far down.”

It was a different story for his second brother.

“My second brother was an engineer, highly intelligent who abused alcohol every night and eventually prescription drugs. But he was a professional, worked every day and never missed a day of work until the very end. He just died one night.”

It’s the second brother who inspired this specific centre.

“Our treatment centre is currently focused on people that are functional. They have problems, but they’re not completely all the way out of normal expectations,” he said.

Lemstra said doctors, nurses, police officers, and teachers are just some of the professions who have sought help.

Patients have to pay for their 30-day stay at the centre. Lemstra said the cost is exactly half of the price of comparable facilities in the country.

“The cheapest program that we could find in Canada was $16,645 per month, so we’re charging exactly half,” Lemstra said.

“We’re running it as a breakeven center.”

The exterior of the treatment centre. (Stefanie Davis / CTV News)

It’s not only his personal life that fueled inspiration for the project. Recent mental health and addictions statistics also played a role.

“The year before the pandemic started, the prevalence of major depressive disorder in Canada according to Statistics Canada was 6.7 per cent. Within the first year of the pandemic, the prevalence of major depressive disorder increased to 15.2 per cent,” he said, adding it climbed more after that.

When it comes to addictions, he highlighted numbers over the past five years.

“In Saskatchewan, the number of drug-related deaths in the past five years has increased by over 500 per cent,” he said.

“If any number is getting 100 per cent worse per year, every year for five straight years, someone should probably do something about it.”

PRIMARY PRACTICES

Alliance’s treatment centre operates in a unique way compared to some other similar facilities.

“I think there are two things that are maybe the most different,” Lemstra said.

The first is called individual psychology, which Lemstra says focuses more on a patient’s present than their past.

“The second big part is that all of our sessions are one on one,” he said. “I have a worry about group therapy that a lot of people won’t even go to group therapy because they don’t want to talk about all of their secrets in front of a group. But even if they do go, I don’t know if they’re going to be completely honest.”

Lemstra said so far, they’ve seen about half of the patients come in for mental health challenges and the other half for addiction.

CEO of Alliance Health, Mark Lemstra. (Stefanie Davis / CTV News)

Patients work with a broad range of health professionals including clinical social workers, psychiatrists, family doctors, pharmacists and more.

Located near the Wakamow Valley, the centre also focuses strongly on activities in nature or other methods to make patients comfortable.

“It’s different every day because we really work to connect with the guests that we have. There’s really no set routine. When people are ready, they’re ready,” Brenda Zinn, a clinical social worker at the treatment centre, said. “There’s no canned program.”

“We try to engage them in all different levels that we can. We sit and eat with them, we go for walks with them, we play games with them. It’s just really trying to get to know everybody and their individual needs.”

Lemstra said the centre started off slow to ensure staff were comfortable with procedures. Now more than six months in, they’re ready to operate at full capacity to help as many people as possible.