news
West Toronto Youth Access Free Mental and Sexual Health Care at EdgeWest Clinic
Planned Parenthood Toronto and a Davenport community health centre have partnered to offer drop-in service to teens and twentysomethings, 12 hours a week.
Photo by HiMY SYeD, from the Torontoist Flickr Pool.
At EdgeWest clinic at 1900 Davenport Road, the teens and twentysomethings of West Toronto can access treatment for sexual and mental health care, and more, without an appointment, or even a health card.
Anyone aged 13 to 29 who lives in the Davenport-Junction-Kingsway area can drop in for low-cost birth control, testing for pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections, anonymous HIV testing, mental health care, and addiction care. Group therapy and group addiction programs are being planned for the near future.
The clinic also performs general practitioner duties (checkups, immunizations, treatment of coughs and colds). With partner organizations, including Legal Aid Ontario and LOFT Community Services, EdgeWest offers legal advice and care planning for at-risk youth as well.
Toronto’s west end is particularly lacking in youth health services, said Davenport-Perth Neighbourhood and Community Health Centre executive director Kim Fraser and Planned Parenthood Toronto executive director Sarah Hobbs-Blyth. The two organizations opened EdgeWest in December 2014.
“Research… indicated that youth in the area were experiencing higher incidents of sexually transmitted infections, higher pregnancy and birth rates as compared to youth in the city of Toronto [as a whole],” wrote the directors, in a joint email.
Often, young people in the area were going to emergency rooms to get treatment for problems that can be better handled at clinics like EdgeWest, they said.
According to Canada’s leading mental health advocates, the need for accessible youth services is nationwide. The Mental Health Commission of Canada (MHCC) reports that 1.2 million children and youth suffer from some form of mental illness, and that suicide is the leading non-accidental cause of death in Canadians aged 15 to 24. But, as former MHCC board chair and former senator Michael Kirby wrote in a 2013 op-ed, Canada is afflicted by a two-tiered mental health system, in which long wait periods for free care and the high cost of private care combine to bar many young Canadians from timely treatment.
Open Mondays and Wednesdays from 4 p.m. to 8 p.m. and Saturdays from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., the free, drop-in EdgeWest clinic is being promoted as a comfortable, safe place for young people to get help.
In the early stages of developing the EdgeWest program, staff asked more than 300 local youths about what services they wanted to see at the clinic and what time of day the office should be open.
“It is extremely important,” wrote the directors, “for youth to have access to… services that are specific to their needs in a non-judgmental, supportive, inclusive, youth-positive environment.”