Working with Youth During the COVID-19 Pandemic: Adaptations and Insights from Youth Workers.

In 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic thrust the world's population into a crisis. Social workers and other professionals working with youth have been front-line witnesses to the accentuated negative impact of this public health emergency on youth and their families as well as to the creative adaptive strategies of youth and their families. Purpose: Because youth workers are often the first to identify and respond to the needs and desires of children and youth, it is critical to better understand the ways in which youth workers adapted, coped, and intervened within the context of this global health, social, and economic crisis. Youth workers play a central role in the lives of children and youth. Their perspective is key to recognizing both practice innovation and organizational impediments. Method: 31 youth workers in mental health, housing, primary care, and child protection participated in focus groups discussing the impact of the pandemic during waves 1 and 2 on the youth and families they work with and, consequently, on their own practice. Results: include two central domains that organize findings around adapting professional practice to crisis situations: (1) the first-person experience of working with youth during the pandemic; (2) the changing needs and risks faced by youth and their families. Discussion: These domains include discussions around participant emotions and feelings of isolation, helplessness, and fear as well as adaptability. The article concludes with recommendations to support youth workers and adapt organizational structures to help protect youth from increased risk and vulnerability during a pandemic or other crises.

Narrative Matters: Mental health recovery - considerations when working with youth.

BACKGROUND: Youth mental health and well-being is of increasing concern to practitioners and policy-makers. Youth experiencing mental health problems face many barriers in accessing care and often have different needs to those of adults experiencing mental health problems. In order to adequately respond to the needs of young people aged 12-25, it is necessary to understand, from their perspective, their diverse needs and their different realities, using a global health approach and through participation in the development of mental health services and care. There are documented difficulties in implementing a recovery-oriented practice approach that have led to misapplications, misunderstandings and critiques. That said, there is little research or discussion on mental health recovery by and for young people and young adults. PURPOSE: To help child and adolescent mental health practitioners better assess the pertinence of the mental health recovery model in their practice, a focus on the emergence of the model can be helpful in order to adapt the current conceptions of mental health recovery for work with youth. CONCLUSION: Child and adolescent mental health professionals might want to consider the following three suggestions - consider developmental processes, focus on hope and create strong community ties.

Recovery Attitudes and Recovery Practices Have an Impact on Psychosocial Outreach Interventions in Community Mental Health Care.

The most recent mental health policies implemented in the province of Québec, Canada, have emphasized recovery-oriented mental health practice. Part of this impetus has resulted in significant importance placed on the development of community mental health models in the public health system. The forms of community mental health programs have evolved considerably over time in Québec but are largely inspired by the evidence-based model of Assertive Community Treatment (ACT). However, if mental health policies and programs in Québec are now emphasizing the role of community mental health, it is also clear that actors on the field are implementing the evolving practice paradigms that dominate our mental health policies, such as recovery, participation, citizenship, in a variable way (1, 2). This article presents an ethnographic inspired research study conducted in 2014 and aims to contribute to the understanding of how recovery-oriented mental health policies are understood and implemented in an ACT team in downtown Montréal, Québec. With the aim of developing integrated knowledge on the issue of recovery in mental health and the conditions it presupposes, this research draws on field experiences from various actors, including service users with severe mental health problems, typically with concomitant disorders and complicated by substance use and/or living in a situation of homelessness. Using a critical constructivist approach, the research sought to a) explore how participants (stakeholders, users, and psychiatrists) achieve their social order; b) understand the meaning of recovery in mental health for participants and the actions associated with recovery as a process or as a practice; c) apprehend the potential of community interventions to connect the individual to the collective. The results indicate that the (over)use of medicolegal tools and the unchanging conception of "madness" represent obstacles to the sustained development of interventions centered on the person, his living conditions, and his recovery. Nevertheless, many interactions between service providers and service users indicate the potential for emerging recovery-oriented practice interventions, particularly when those interactions are based on positive and egalitarian conceptions between service providers and service users that led to the development of spaces for the co-construction innovative practice approaches.

Contribution des hôpitaux de jour en psychiatrie dans le champ contemporain de la santé mentale au Québec / Contribuição dos hospitais-dia de psiquiatria no campo da saúde mental em Quebec

Actuellement au Québec, les hôpitaux de jour en psychiatrie sont des milieux de jour offrant un programme thérapeutique intensif de courte durée, principalement dans un contexte d'activités de groupe. Alors que les hôpitaux de jour sont des acteurs qui font partie intégrante du système de soins en santé mentale depuis plusieurs décennies, la question de leur rôle et de leur contribution spécifique dans le champ des approches et des pratiques de traitement et pour les personnes qu'ils rejoignent est rarement posée. Cet article s'articule autour de l'hypothèse selon laquelle les repères et les cadres actuellement dominants dans le champ de la psychiatrie et de la santé mentale permettent mal de dégager et de prendre en compte certains des paramètres dont il faut tenir compte pour parvenir à préciser et à situer le rôle et la contribution des hôpitaux de jour, dans le système de soin comme pour les personnes auxquelles ces milieux de pratique s'adressent. À partir des résultats préliminaires d'une étude exploratoire poursuivie dans quatre hôpitaux de jour où différents acteurs ont été rencontrés lors d'entrevues (personnes utilisatrices, intervenants, gestionnaires), cet article propose de dégager quelques pistes d'analyse et de réflexion.

Em Quebec, atualmente, os hospitais-dia em psiquiatria oferecem um programa terapêutico intensivo de curta duração, focado em atividades de grupo. Esses hospitais-dia são parte integrante do sistema de saúde em psiquiatria e saúde mental depois de várias décadas, entretanto o seu papel em relação às suas práticas com a inclusão daqueles que seguiram esse tratamento é raramente colocado. Nessa perspectiva, este artigo se articula em torno da hipótese de que os valores de referencia, hoje dominantes no campo da psiquiatria e saúde mental, não permitem identificar e levar em conta certos parâmetros necessários para se precisar e situar o papel e a contribuição específica dos hospitais-dia no sistema de saúde mental e para as pessoas às quais se destinam. À partir de resultados preliminares de um estudo exploratório realizado em quatro hospitais-dia em psiquiatria, com entrevistas individuais (pessoas usuárias, trabalhadores e gestores), se propõe identificar algumas pistas de análise e reflexão.