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Mood Disorders

Treatment

The Royal Ottawa Mental Health Centre's Mood Disorders Program serves people over the age of 18 with known or suspected mood disorder requiring higher level of service. This includes patients with treatment-resistant mood episode, bipolar disorder patients, patients with recurrent major depressive disorder and patients with chronic depressive disorder or depression with residual symptoms.

A physician referral is needed for assessment and/or follow-up in our Mood Disorders Program. People without a physician can contact the College of Physicians and Surgeons at (613) 730-8177 to ask for help in finding a family physician for a referral.

The care system includes an inpatient facility and an outpatient clinic providing specialized comprehensive multidisciplinary assessment and care for the patients as described above. The multidisciplinary team includes a PhD psychologist, nurses, psychiatrists, an occupational therapist, a dietician, a social worker, and a recreation therapist.

General Treatment Approach

Treatment is a respectful and active partnership between the patient and the program clinical staff. The Mood Disorders Program offers:

  • psychiatric and psychological assessment and treatment;
  • individual, family and marital therapy; as well as
  • assessment of each patient's accommodation, financial, vocational, leisure and nutritional needs.

Psychiatric rehabilitation is an important focus of the Mood Disorders Program. The goal is to assure that someone with a mental illness has the physical, emotional and intellectual skills they need to live, learn, and work in his or her own particular environment.

Outpatient service

The outpatient clinic is organized to:

  • assess and treat ambulatory patients discharged from the inpatient unit;
  • treat patients referred by the intensive care facilities or directly by community psychiatrists or GPs; and
  • provide specialized consulting to a community care provider.

The outpatient service is a back-up for a patient's other mental health-care provider. The two main therapeutic thrusts are: i) to provide an integrated multidisciplinary strategy to prevent relapse and recurrence; and ii) to treat ambulatory, treatment-resistant depressed patients including those who also have a substance abuse disorder.

The specialized assessment of patients by the multidisciplinary team features clinical diagnostic assessment, personality assessment, functional assessment including standardized cognitive evaluation.

Outpatient treatments include both specialized pharmacotherapy and psychological approaches. Cognitive behaviour therapy focusing on preventing a recurrence is available either through in a group setting or individually according to each patient's needs.

Inpatient Services

The inpatient unit's main target population is patients with mood resistant/refractory episodes that require more intensive and prolonged care resources.

Treatment goals are developed in consultation with the patient and worked on through individual and group activities.

Admission to the Mood and Anxiety Inpatient Unit is usually through the Emergency Department of a general hospital, then to the Royal Ottawa Mental Health Centre's Crisis Program.

Other members of the treatment team include the hospital chaplain, patient representative, pharmacist, volunteers, as well as administrative and support staff.