Help for health care providers who need help treating patients with mental illness

Morning North7:34New app for health care providers dealing with mental illness patients

A new app and website was just launched that supplies information to health care providers so they can help their mentally ill patients. Amy Restoule is part of a team that created a new app and website. She told us more about it.

A Sudbury-area social worker says a new web site will help people like her to provide better mental health care.

Amy Restoule, who has clients in Noelville, St. Charles and Warren, said they all need mental health care, but don't have access to a specialist.

Primary health care providers, like nurses and family doctors, need to be better informed to provide mental health care, she noted.

Restoule helped develop a new website and app with the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health that will answer questions for non-specialists in the field.

The tools will help them "quickly be able to complete a screening question with a client and have the results, the scoring, within a matter of seconds, and be able to share that information with the client," she said.

The Portico Network also helps unite primary caregivers through discussions and forums on mental health, she added.

And, it provides assessment surveys and "webinars" for nurses, family doctors and other caregivers.

The network will serve to reduce "professional isolation that can sometimes lead to compassion fatigue," she said.

"So knowing that there are other communities struggling with similar issues — and that we have the common challenges that we can work on together — has really re-energized me and my colleagues."