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Mental Health Consultation Services

Mental Health Consultation Services are offered for the City of Hamilton and the region of Niagara, Haldimand, Brant, Burlington and Norfolk. These services are available to children and youth, up to their 18th birthday.

This one-time service does NOT provide urgent psychiatric consultation. If you are concerned about acute safety issues for your patient (e.g., suicidal ideation), please contact your local crisis service or direct your patient to the nearest emergency department.

Please note this service is not for ongoing treatment and care. If such services are required, including ongoing psychiatric involvement, we can help connect you to these services.

Mental Health Consultation and Assessment is for:

  1. Diagnostic clarification
  2. Second opinion
  3. Medication consultation

A mental health provider will meet with you/your child to learn about the difficulties that you are having. If you have family members with you, you can decide to let them take part in discussions.

Having family members present assists with:

  • Helping everyone reach a common understanding of you/your child’s difficulties
  • Making recommendations to your family doctor/ pediatrician who referred you to best suit you/your child’s needs

As we are a teaching hospital, medical residents and students in health professions may also be involved in you/your child’s care

What to Expect at Your First Visit

Our goal is to help you to understand what to expect at your visit with the Mental Health Consultation Services. We look forward to meeting you or, you and your family.

At this time, the Mental Health Consultation Services are offered virtually AND on site at the Ron Joyce Children’s Health Centre (RJCHC). You will be offered a choice for your first visit.

Our services focus on both individual and family-based care therefore parents and caregivers will be invited to participate throughout the course of the assessment, as appropriate..

While scheduling your first visit, please let the scheduler know if you need an interpreter during your appointment. We prioritize everyone’s access to care and will do our best to coordinate an interpreter to attend your appointment.

Before your visit

Before your first visit, you will be sent an email questionnaire to complete before your first visit. This information helps us understand what’s happening and what we can focus on in the first appointment. The questionnaires take 20-30 minutes to complete. If you have lost the link, call us at (905) 521-2100 x. 77621 and we will resend the email.

It is important that you please complete this questionnaire before attending your first appointment.

The first visit

The first visit can last anywhere between 1.5 to 2 hours. The length of appointment depends on the type of assessment that will be completed. Please ensure you clarify how long your appointment will be and plan your time accordingly.

In-person at RJCHC

When you arrive, please check in on the 1st floor at the Central Registration & Scheduling (CRS) desk located just past the front doors on your right, across from the elevators.

Then, take the elevator to the 3rd floor. Our Receptionist will welcome you and make sure you are in the right place.

When it is time for your appointment, your care provider will come to get you.

Depending on the nature of the assessment and treatment, we might have your appointment in a different location such as in our garden or in a room that is larger to accommodate different testing needs.

Virtual

We will send you instructions about access to virtual care.

What to Bring

  1. Ontario Health Insurance (OHIP) Card (not needed for virtual care)
  2. A list of medication– current medication and dosage, as well as past medication, reasons for stopping medications (if applicable), and information about any vitamins or supplements you are taking. Note that you can request this list free of charge from your pharmacy
  3. Any previous documentation of assessments or testing results from mental health treatment in the past you think might be helpful to us. This might include questionnaires or assessments you completed with a family doctor or at school.

Who Will Provide Your Care

Our Approach to Care

Compassion and caring is at the core of the services we provide to children, youth and parents/caregivers/families. We will work together with you to ensure you feel comfortable in care and establish a care plan with you that is suitable to your needs.
Recommendations for your care plan will be shared with the person who referred you – typically your family doctor or pediatrician.

You will meet with ONE of our mental health providers below::

  • Psychiatrists
  • Psychologists
  • Nurse Practitioners

Your mental health provider will:

  • meet with you/your child to learn about the difficulties that you are having. If you have family members with you, you can decide to let them take part in discussions.
  • help everyone reach an understanding of you/your child’s difficulties.
  • make recommendations to best suit you/your child’s needs.

As we are a teaching hospital, medical residents and students in health professions may also be involved in you/your child’s care.

How to Make and Cancel Appointments

If you need to make, change or cancel an appointment, please call our RJCHC Centralized Registration and Scheduling Desk (CRS) at 905-521-2100 ext. 44446 and they will help you.

We are mindful of life’s uncertainties.

If you are experiencing challenges with attending a scheduled appointment and need to cancel or change your appointment, we ask that you please let us know as soon as you are able to and to please let us know how we can help. We ask that whenever you can, that you give us 24-48 hours’ notice.

We do our best to provide an appointment time that is convenient. Please understand that there are many requests for an ‘afterschool’ time and we do our best to ‘share’ these preferred appointment times.

How is the privacy of my information protected?

Who will be involved in the care?

We take your privacy very seriously. We protect the privacy of your personal information, and we ask you for consent before we share your information with others. In some cases, someone else may be able to provide consent on your behalf. This will be discussed further during your first visit as we know you may have questions. We will discuss situations when you have the right to keep your information private from anyone you choose, including family members. We will also discuss situations when others might be able to access your information.

We also want caregivers to feel comfortable to share information. This information will be kept within your care team, unless we ask for further consent to share it.

There are times when privacy can’t be maintained due to safety.

Reasons for this:

  1. If a child under the age of 16 is being hurt or abused, or at risk of being hurt or abused
  2. If anyone is in immediate danger of hurting themselves or someone else
  3. If a regulated health professional is or has been sexually inappropriate with someone
  4. If our documents were to be asked for by a court of law

How We Approach Service Improvements & Research

During services, we will ask you to complete short questionnaires about how you are doing. This information helps us keep track of how things are going during service and work out how best to support you.

Using information to improve services

Sometimes, we group your data together with data from other youth and families to look at how well our services are doing overall. When the data is grouped, any identifying information (name, address, date of birth) is removed so no-one can tell whose data it is. Your information helps us to improve our services and respond better to the need of children, youth and families in our community.

Research

Research is an important part of the work we do. Through research we can learn more about the experiences of children, youth and families and how best to help. We will ask you whether you and your family would like to be involved in current or future research. You can decide whether or not to take part in research. Your decision will not impact your care in any way.

 

Locations

McMaster University Medical Centre exterior

1200 Main Street West, Hamilton, ON, Canada

Ron Joyce Children's Health Centre exterior

325 Wellington St N, Hamilton, ON, Canada