New acute mental health and addiction supports

Issue: BCMJ, vol. 56, No. 4, May 2014, Page 177 News

In response to a Ministry of Health Report, Improving Health Services for Individuals with Severe Addiction and Mental Illness, the BC government is launching an Assertive Outreach Team in Vancouver and opening a new Acute Behavioural Stabilization Unit at St. Paul’s Hospital to improve care for patients with severe addiction and mental health needs.

The Assertive Outreach Team includes a nurse, social worker, psychiatrist, physician, and Vancouver Po-lice Department staff working together to support patients who suffer from severe addictions and mental health issues and transition them from local emergency departments in Vancouver to appropriate community services. The Assertive Outreach Team is a collaboration between Vancouver Coastal Health, the Vancouver Police Department, Providence Health Care, and Mental Health Emergency Services.

The outreach team will help support patients transitioning from the new Acute Behavioural Stabil-ization Unit at St. Paul’s. This new unit is open 24 hours per day, 7 days per week, and provides nine dedicated emergency psychiatric beds located in a separate area of St. Paul’s emergency department. The unit offers short-stay admissions (up to 48 hours) and has been renovated to increase the capacity of St. Paul’s emergency department to treat this complex patient population. The unit is staffed with an interdisciplinary team of emergency physicians, emer-gency nurses, psychiatrists, registered psychiatric nurses, psychiatric asses-s-ment nurses, and social workers, and receives input from addictions consultants.

To read the Ministry of Health Care report, visit www.health.gov.bc.ca/library/publications/year/2013/improving-severe-add....

. New acute mental health and addiction supports. BCMJ, Vol. 56, No. 4, May, 2014, Page(s) 177 - News.



Above is the information needed to cite this article in your paper or presentation. The International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) recommends the following citation style, which is the now nearly universally accepted citation style for scientific papers:
Halpern SD, Ubel PA, Caplan AL, Marion DW, Palmer AM, Schiding JK, et al. Solid-organ transplantation in HIV-infected patients. N Engl J Med. 2002;347:284-7.

About the ICMJE and citation styles

The ICMJE is small group of editors of general medical journals who first met informally in Vancouver, British Columbia, in 1978 to establish guidelines for the format of manuscripts submitted to their journals. The group became known as the Vancouver Group. Its requirements for manuscripts, including formats for bibliographic references developed by the U.S. National Library of Medicine (NLM), were first published in 1979. The Vancouver Group expanded and evolved into the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE), which meets annually. The ICMJE created the Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing, and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals to help authors and editors create and distribute accurate, clear, easily accessible reports of biomedical studies.

An alternate version of ICMJE style is to additionally list the month an issue number, but since most journals use continuous pagination, the shorter form provides sufficient information to locate the reference. The NLM now lists all authors.

BCMJ standard citation style is a slight modification of the ICMJE/NLM style, as follows:

  • Only the first three authors are listed, followed by "et al."
  • There is no period after the journal name.
  • Page numbers are not abbreviated.


For more information on the ICMJE Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing, and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals, visit www.icmje.org

BCMJ Guidelines for Authors

Leave a Reply