What to Expect

Children with serious health concerns often experience mental health difficulties, including depression, anxiety, and/or medical post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Our mental health experts can help your child or adolescent overcome these challenges and more specifically, they focus on helping your child:

• Have less anxiety about a procedure
• Follow medical treatments consistently
• Prepare for transition to adult care, if applicable
• Learn to self-manage their illness so that they can live a fuller life

If you live far away from our hospital, our team will make recommendations for treatment and refer your child/teenager to local services near home when mental health concerns are identified.

Electrophysiology (EP)

Living with a heart that beats too fast or slow can be frightening. If your child has an implantable cardioverter defibrillator (ICD) and is being treated by our Electrophysiology (EP) doctors, our cardiac psychology team will work with you and your child to:

• Assess how your child is coping and help them adjust
• Screen your child’s mental health needs and offer support to children with ICDs
• Offer in-clinic support for patients with ICDs and their families

Pediatric Advanced Cardiac Therapies (PACT)

For our PACT (Pediatric Advanced Cardiac Therapies) Program families and patients who had a heart transplant, we provide:

• Pre-transplant psychosocial evaluations
• In-clinic support for patients who have a ventricular assist device and/or are on a heart transplant waiting list
• In-clinic post-transplant follow-up as part of a multidisciplinary clinic visit
• Annual evaluations for patients listed for heart transplant
• Annual evaluations for transplanted heart patients