Mental health services in New Westminster are now easier to access.
Fraser Health recently announced the implementation of an Assertive Community Treatment (ACT) team for New Westminster and Tri-Cities residents living with serious and persistent mental illness.
The team will be mobile, with 75 per cent of their services delivered in settings such as residences, shelters, drop-in centres and even public parks.
The team includes a coordinator, psychiatrist and 10 mental health staff: social workers, nurses, mental health-care workers, occupational therapists and peer support workers.
Services include comprehensive assessment, treatment, rehabilitation and support activities.
The program offers flexible, community-based support for adults who have not connected with, or responded well to, traditional outpatient mental health-care and rehabilitation services.
The ACT model is internationally-recognized for its demonstrated effectiveness for clients in the greatest need, according to a press release from Fraser Health.
Since February 2012, Fraser Health has had an ACT team in operation in Surrey, which has seen "tremendous outcomes," according to the health organization.
When fully functional, the team in New Westminster and the Tri-Cities will be able to support about 80 to 100 patients.
REDUCE SALT
The bad news: North Americans eat too much salt. The good news: if we lower our sodium intake closer to the recommended daily levels, hundreds of thousands of us could be saved from heart disease in the next 10 years.
This is according to a new study by researchers at SFU and four U.S. universities, who recently published their results in the American Heart Association journal Hypertension.
Researchers used data from cardiovascular patients, as well as established evidence that salt reduction lowers blood pressure, to gain more information about the relationship between blood pressure and cardiovascular disease.
The four teams all came to the same conclusion: substantial benefits are gleaned from reducing sodium levels to those closer to the recommended guideline of 2,300 mg per day, according to SFU health sciences professor Michel Joffres, one of the lead authors of the study.
