{"id":22894,"date":"2019-05-21T08:58:59","date_gmt":"2019-05-21T13:58:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/portage.hamakmarketingnumerique.com\/?p=22894"},"modified":"2020-10-23T13:09:48","modified_gmt":"2020-10-23T18:09:48","slug":"addiction-mental-health-women-inauguration","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/portage.ca\/en\/addiction-mental-health-women-inauguration\/","title":{"rendered":"Pride and Emotion at the Inauguration of the MICA Program for Women"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

It\u2019s Monday May 6, 2019 and in\nMontreal, the Drug Rehabilitation Centre for Mentally Ill Chemical Abusers\n(MICA) is a beehive of activity. Five female residents of the MICA Centre look\non as the dining room undergoes a transformation in the lead-up to the official\ninauguration of one of Portage\u2019s most unique programs. Today, the centre\u2019s male\nresidents are on an outing, while the women take centre stage! <\/p>\n\n\n\n

An Innovative Program<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

The MICA program for men has yielded extraordinary\nresults every year since its inception in 1995. Portage had long wanted to\nextend its MICA program to include women. \nJust under a year ago, Portage welcomed its first female resident to the\nMICA centre. Thanks to Employment and Social Development Canada\u2019s Homelessness\nPartnering Strategy and to the Portage Foundation\u2019s generous donors, there is\nnew hope for women struggling with mental illness and addiction.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The program addresses three co-occurring problems: mental\nhealth issues, addiction and homelessness. Every Portage program is tailored to\nindividuals according to their gender, circumstances and personal journey.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The President of Portage, Peter A. Howlett, is pleased\nthat the program has been made available to women: \u201cPortage has wanted to\nimplement a women\u2019s program for many years now. While there was already a\nprogram for men, there was no similar service offering for women and so we are\ndelighted that donors rallied to ensure its implementation. The\ntherapeutic approach has been modified to treat women with mental illness and\naddiction problems and enable them to live a healthy life\u02ba.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Acknowledgements<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

The inauguration provided an opportunity to highlight the devotion and hard work of the Portage partners who were involved in developing the program, and to underscore its importance.  As a Clinical Psychiatrist, Clinical-administrative Chief and Head of the JAP clinic (for youth who have undergone a psychotic episode), Doctor Amal Abdel-Baki, Head of the Youth Mental Health Continuum, talked with great conviction about the help Portage provides to individuals in distress. Doctor Abdel-Baki\u2019s work puts her in direct contact with individuals experiencing mental health and addiction problems. She points out the severe lack of services for people who suffer from both mental illness and addiction.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2026 and pride<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

On Monday, May 6th<\/sup>, emotion grips the\naudience when J\u00e9ziel, one of the first graduates of the MICA program for women,\nwalks up to the microphone to share her story: \u201cI\nfelt like a monster living amid society. I couldn\u2019t do anything anymore. I was merely\nsurviving. I was experiencing episodes of toxic psychosis and couldn\u2019t trust\nmyself anymore. When I was diagnosed with a schizoaffective disorder, I started\ntaking medication that had a lot of side effects.  I fell into a depression and started using\nagain\u2026\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The young woman seems self-assured and talks about her troubled past as if it was nothing more than a memory. She describes her stay at Portage: \u201cI entered the MICA program for women on June 20th. I was part of a small group that could accommodate up to nine individuals with mental health and addiction issues. At first, I had trouble getting through the day because I had just gotten out of the hospital, where I did nothing but eat and sleep. At Portage, every day, we had several group meetings on various topics, such as family relationships. What I discovered at Portage was a great deal of love. The counsellors are so devoted to their work that I felt like I had found a new family\u02ba. The MICA program is unique because it requires its residents to work at learning how to manage their mental health problems, while developing social skills and a support network. The counsellors\u2019 commitment to helping the residents is obvious and reflects the special bond between them. That bond is not only professional, it also based on emotion and pride. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Portage-Inauguration-MICA-Women-TSTM-Femmes\"
From left to right: J\u00e9ziel, Dr. Amal Abdel-Baki, Peter A. Howlett, Antonio Maturo<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"Dr.Abdel-Baki-Inauguration-MICA-Women-TSTM-Femmes-Portage\"
Dr. Amal Abdel-Baki speaking at Portage’s MICA Program for Women Inauguration<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s Monday May 6, 2019 and in Montreal, the Drug Rehabilitation Centre for Mentally Ill Chemical Abusers (MICA) is a beehive of activity. Five female residents of the MICA Centre look on as the dining room undergoes a transformation in the lead-up to the official inauguration of one of Portage\u2019s most unique programs. Today, the… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":22851,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-22894","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-quebec-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/portage.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22894","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/portage.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/portage.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/portage.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/portage.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22894"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/portage.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22894\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/portage.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22851"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/portage.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22894"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/portage.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22894"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/portage.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22894"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}