Hôtel-Dieu Grace Healthcare (HDGH) provided an update on its Mental Health and Addictions Urgent Crisis Centre (MHAUCC) on Wednesday after just over a year of expanded service.
The centre is open 24/7 for individuals aged 16 years or older who are experiencing a mental health or addictions crisis and cannot safely wait for community mental health and addiction support. Since expanding in March of 2025, MHAUCC offers services including Crisis Assessment, Intervention and De-escalation, Grief Supportive Counselling and Coping Skills, Psychiatric Assessment and Medication Management, Substance Use Counselling, Harm Reduction Support, Medically Supportive Withdrawal Initiation, Rapid Access to Withdrawal Management Services, System Navigation, and Referral to Community Mental Health and Service Providers.
Some of the top reasons clients visit the MHAUCC are mood disorders, substance use, and psycho-social crisis.
"It really speaks to a lot of the services we've added to the MHAUCC, to put all the specialties of mental health and addictions under one roof, to get people the help they need in one place," said Kevin Matte, HDGH's Director of Crisis and Addictions Services.
"Fifty-nine per cent of clients have a substance use concern," Matte added. He explained further that sometimes substance abuse is the main reason a client visits the centre, but often it can be an overlapping issue that requires help from multiple professionals.
"What we've seen in our data is that 30 per cent of the clients that come in are using more than one service a day," Matte explained, adding that while someone might come in to see a nurse, treatment might also require a psychiatrist, or an addictions worker.
With each additional layer of service added, visits to the MHAUCC have increased and it's expected that as the program becomes more well known, those numbers will continue to go up.
"Back in March of 2025... that's when we had those first four stabilization beds and we added a nursing component," Matte noted. "At that point we could start administering medication, we had a hospitalist on call, and it shifted from kind of like a walk-in service, where people walk-in and leave, to a service where people could stay for up to 72 hours."
Visits jumped up again at the end of July 2025, when all services, not just beds, became accessible 24 hours a day.
"That was obviously a big boost to the numbers," Matte said of that expansion. "Now we're seeing well over 100 people every month for services after hours (8 p.m.)."
November 2025, saw the last big expansion of services, with psychiatric services being offered every day of the week from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. That saw the number psych consultations alone jump from 84 in the month of October to 127 in the month of January.
Matte also pointed out the importance of the MHAUCC's withdrawal management services. He said that the length of time it used to take could often lead to a gap in services, but with everything under one roof, clients at MHAUCC get direct access to withdrawal management.
"Now we're seeing, on a regular basis, over 50 people a month coming in, starting treatment, and then going to withdrawal management based off that stay," he shared.
Matte explained that the increase of clients seeking help at the crisis centre, didn't just help them, it also took pressure off of hospital emergency departments.
"March 31st [2025] to March 31st [2026], we've offloaded over 200 ambulances with no offload delays," Matte stated. "In any given month, we're typically taking double the clients from the emergency department than we're sending to the emergency department."
Much of the funding for the program's expansion comes from reallocating funds from the now closed Residential Treatment Facility.
MHAUCC plans to publish the results of its services in medical journals, as the program is unique not only in Ontario, but in all of Canada.
