N.S. social workers call out government's plan to offer one free therapy session

The Nova Scotia government's offer for a free, one-hour counselling session for residents is not enough, say the province's college of social workers and the official Opposition.

N Siritsky, a consultant with the college of social workers, said, "the majority of people who need free mental health care have complex needs that require more than one session."

"A practitioner never knows if the presenting issue that's drawing a person to call for help is the only issue or not," Siritsky, who uses they/them pronouns, said in an interview Monday.

"So there has to be some kind of assessment, and that usually takes at least one to three sessions."

Nova Scotia's Progressive Conservative government said last week that it had contracted Telus Health to offer residents a free, single session of individual, couples or family counselling that can be conducted by phone, online or in person in Halifax, Sydney, Kentville and New Glasgow. The program is budgeted to cost $2.3 million per year.

Brian Comer, the minister responsible for mental health and addictions and who worked as a mental health nurse prior to his election, said in an interview Monday that the recently announced program is meant to complement the province's existing health-care options and the virtual mental health tools available through the department's website.

The minister said that while this service is not meant for those who need ongoing counselling, there is nothing stopping residents from accessing the service on more than one occasion — they just likely won't get the same counsellor.

A mental health department spokesperson said that for example, someone who accesses a single counselling session to get support while going through job loss can at a later date book a second one-hour appointment for relationship problems.

"This won't be the optimal treatment for every Nova Scotian, but I do think it will certainly help a lot of people," Comer said.

He said the counselling will be a new access point for people to receive mental health care and that it will offer a way for them to learn about and "develop coping skills and resiliency skills."

Judith Laposa, a psychologist with the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health and professor at the University of Toronto, said a single-session therapy appointment is not likely to meet the needs of most people who would typically access counselling.

"A full course of treatment for an anxiety disorder is usually 12 sessions, and a full course typically for depression is 16 to 20 sessions," Laposa said in an interview Monday.

"There may be some benefit to meeting with someone once, but would we expect it to have a comparable outcome to a full course of treatment? No."

The Nova Scotia Liberals said in a statement Monday that the party is concerned by the fact that the program doesn't offer continuity of care, and the party's health critic, Rafah DiCostanzo, called it an expensive "Band-Aid fix."