Thanks, Barb.
Regarding COVID-19 and its effect on mental health, overdoses, self-harm and psychosis incidents have increased 50% with our youth clients. We serve about 300 clients a year currently, and that is about to double. Hospitalizations, because of this, cost $1,500 to $2,500 a day and up.
Anxiety and depression are widespread. These mental health issues paralyze young people, causing many to retreat and hide in their single-room occupancy, SRO suites, or basement suites.
The opioid crisis has worsened during the COVID-19 pandemic. We predict that the situation will only get worse, as there are thousands of young people in line to become the next wave of addiction to hit our streets.
Every year about 1,000 youth age out of care in British Columbia, and a further 1,000 hit the streets, running away from dysfunctional homes. Over 60% of these youths aging out of foster care will descend into entrenched addiction to numb their psychological pain.
However, there is a critical period between the ages of 15 and 25, when these young people usually ask for help. If trauma-informed therapy is provided to them for free and without a waiting list, up to 75% of these youth will respond and achieve success in school, work, recovery, housing and job-skills training. They can be diverted from the path towards homelessness, entrenched addiction, overdose and suicide and on towards lives they will enjoy living.
The initial effects of past trauma, which include physical abuse, mental abuse, sexual abuse, poverty and intergenerational trauma experienced by our indigenous clients, are normally expressed, to begin with, as anxiety, depression, eating and sleeping disorders, and self-medicating behaviour.
Our therapeutic intervention of four months of trauma-informed counselling costs approximately $2,500. Once the youth descends into entrenched addiction, it costs the community millions of dollars when police services, first responders, hospitals, corrections system, etc., are factored in. This does not even begin to take into account what the addict has to steal, or the sex acts they have to perform in order to get the money to buy the drugs they need.
Harm prevention, specifically trauma-informed therapy, can divert a youth's path away from addiction and homelessness, which not only saves valuable lives but saves millions of dollars in costs to the community.
Trauma-informed recovery is a new idea, and it's still controversial. Rather than the 12-step abstinence recovery programs, which are not best practices with youth, especially regarding opioid addiction, trauma-informed recovery involves a doctor, a therapist and a client agreeing to a contract whereby the physician prescribes an opioid replacement for the client while the client is undergoing trauma counselling.
When working with a therapist, typically over a period of four months, the client first learns self-regulation techniques. This is followed by the counselling trauma work, to help youth gain insight into their past trauma.
Once the trauma work is complete, the client has no need to self-medicate for the psychological pain, and this is when the physician steps in to provide something like an opioid replacement of Suboxone to help them come down without the drug sickness.
This approach is new and controversial, but it is becoming the best-practice model for young people with opioid addiction. Using prescribed stimulants as a replacement for street drugs like crack or meth is also being explored.
The side effect of the opioid crisis and the overdose crisis is the growing number of permanent brain damage situations caused when someone is brought back using Narcan or Naloxone. Some youth brag about how many times they have recovered using Naloxone; however, as therapists we can see the gradual deterioration of cognitive function after multiple applications of Naloxone over multiple overdoses.
A practical harm prevention idea that you can take from this is a CERB forgiveness program for young people who engage in recovery, education, work or training for a year. The money is gone; it's not going to be recovered. These kids don't have this, but it will create an insurmountable obstacle for these young people and cause thousands to give up and go underground to the street, speeding up the path to addiction and homelessness. I have had a youth end their life by suicide when faced with $1,000 in transit fines, which come due when they are about to get their first driver's licence. Imagine the chaos we're going to find when thousands are asked to repay the thousands of dollars they received from CERB fraudulently.
In summary, our goal is to get ahead of the curve of both COVID-19 and the opioid crisis by employing harm-prevention strategies of trauma-informed therapy, training and recovery.
Thank you.