A Surrey psychiatrist has received an award that will help her develop her career and further her research.
Dr. Laura Labonté is a psychiatrist with Surrey’s Intensive Case Management Team and the Surrey Delta Assertive Community Treatment team. Unlike a typical practice where patients come to her, she often has to seek out her patients as they are often hard to reach and have "complex health issues." Many of them are also unhoused.
“Some of the people we see are so vulnerable and constantly transient. This puts them in a perpetual cycle of relapsing and losing all of the stability they have acquired in their life,” Labonté said. "Conventional treatment doesn’t often work because you can’t provide daily medication to someone when you can’t find them for days at a time.”
On Oct. 29, Labonté received the Michael Smith Health Research BC Research Trainee award. This will allow her to dedicate some of her time to research, starting off by working with a study led by Dr. William Honer at the University of British Columbia.
"This study was designed to examine the intersection of physical and mental health in relation to drug addiction and public health issues in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside," reads a Fraser Health release. "She will then embark on carrying out the first longitudinal study in Fraser Health aimed at better understanding and supporting some of the most vulnerable people in our region. Ultimately, the research aims to recommend ways of keeping people stable, housed and engaged with their care teams."
The Michael Smith Health Research BC award was given to 44 emerging researchers in B.C.
She is a recent graduate of the University of British Columbia Department of Psychiatry Research-Track and Fraser residency Programs.
Labonté did not originally plan on becoming a psychiatrist.
“I was going the internal medicine route, but I fell in love with psychiatry and the stories of the people I met. It’s such a privilege when you get to know them and see their challenges and often, the very difficult life stories they’ve struggled with. For me, making a connection when others can’t, is so rewarding.“
