Now she is trying to raise awareness of the lack of available treatment for youth struggling with substance abuse, and to make treatment on demand more accessible in the Greater Vancouver area.

Mervyn, a 29-year-old White Rock resident, is a crisis worker at Surrey Memorial Hospital and has completed her first video ethnography, Metamorphosis: An In-Depth Look at the Lives of Former Street Kids.

A short version of the film features four young women in B.C. who have made successful exits off the street. The full-length version looks at six, one of whom continues her struggle.

Half the street kids in the film are of aboriginal descent. Though accurate numbers are difficult to obtain, studies suggest aboriginals make up at least 34 per cent of the homeless.

"Youth in this film tell their stories about life on the streets, and what they had to do to leave that life behind them," says Mervyn.

Most youth who end up on the street are there because of substance abuse or they've run away from physical, emotional and sexual abuse, says Mervyn. In order to leave the streets, homeless youth must reestablish family relationships, realize the need for change, maintain a stable residence, deal with earlier life issues and obtain a stable, legitimate job. But without enough treatment or support centres, the transition for youth is difficult.

Last December Bindiigan Place, which was located in Kla-how-eya aboriginal centre and was the only support centre for homeless youth in Surrey, shut down.

Mervyn says it was shut down due to lack of funding. She argues that youth who are crying out for help need facilities available right away.

There wasn't a bed available in any detox facility for her last crystal meth youth, two weeks ago. "One of my biggest frustrations is, say I'm working the emergency room at Surrey Memorial Hospital and I have a young homeless youth who has decided she wants to get off crystal meth. I call every single detox and they say call back in 24 hours and we'll have a bed then. And that's a story I get over and over and over again. I have never, in five and a half years of working there, been able to get a youth right into a bed.

"There needs to be treatment on demand."

She says within two or three days, youth have already gone back to the streets and are usually in a completely different place by then. "We need to grab these opportunities and open windows while we have them," she says.

Mervyn's video ethnography -- a film version of a specific study on a certain human culture -- is also her PhD thesis for counselling psychology at UBC. She was determined to dedicate her thesis to helping youth.

"My master's thesis was about homelessness. It wasn't approved for being about youth and it was published in an academic journal. I was frustrated with who the intended audience ended up being. I wanted it to help youth on the street, and the most interest it generated was from other researchers -- which is important and valid, but wasn't the audience I wanted it to help," says Mervyn.

This time around she asked her friend and recent BCIT grad Ben Hoskyn to film the documentary. By capturing the young women's body language and facial expressions, Mervyn feels she represented all homeless youth who don't have a voice. "It's a medium that is the most powerful and will connect with youth, and I think it carries the message better," says Mervyn, who spent a year and a half organizing, filming and editing the documentary.

The film has been shown 14 times internationally even before its completion, at conferences across North America, from Banff and Toronto to a mental health conference in Florida. She was to present the short version this week at the Aboriginal Policy Research Conference in Ottawa, where 1,000 delegates were expected.

Mervyn still has half a dozen other conferences where she will be presenting her film, in the hope of bringing increased funding and attention to a matter she works with every day.

After that, she is considering starting work on another documentary.

"The next obvious piece of research that needs to be done is a documentary of youth featuring young boys. We really need to look at the stories of young men and see how they're successfully surviving the streets and compare," says Mervyn.