Annual Report 2022-2023: Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH)

Submitted by Dr. Sanjeev Sockalingam, Interim Physician-in-Chief

The Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH) dedicated this last year to addressing the growing mental health crisis and challenges with mental health care access through advances in care, education innovation, and ground-breaking research discoveries. With the leadership and support of CAMH’s 8 Academic Divisions and its growing number of research centres, CAMH has led several new provincial and national initiatives in research, education and clinical care this past year. Examples include the following:

• Launch of Canada’s Suicide Prevention Service – CAMH has led Talk Suicide Canada since 2020, which is the national suicide prevention line. Based upon this work, CAMH has also been selected to co-lead, with the Public Health Agency of Canada, the implementation of 988, the national 3-digit suicide prevention and distress line. The 988 service will launch on November 30, 2023, and will be available in English and French by phone and text. This service is led by CAMH psychiatrist Dr. Allison Crawford, Chief Medical Officer, and Dr. Eva Serhal, Senior Director.

• First of its Kind Child and Youth Cohort Study - While there are several large cohort studies of children and youth in the general population or specific communities, none are of children and youth requiring mental health care (i.e. hospital-based). CAMH has launched its TAY cohort study which aims to understand the long-term outcomes and trajectories of children and youth already receiving mental health care. The main goals are to predict psychosis risk, functioning, and suicide risk and to embed clinical trials to moderate and change that risk. The team includes: Drs. Kristin Cleverley, Darren Courtney George Foussias, Lena Quilty, Erin Dickie, Stephanie Ameis, Yuliya Nikolova, Andree Diaconescu, Nicole Kozloff, Alexia Polilo Daniel Felsky, Wei Wang and many more.

• Canada’s Only Accredited Mental Health Simulation Centre Goes Virtual – This past year, the CAMH Simulation Centre, the only accredited mental health simulation centre in the world, has integrated and expanded its use of virtual reality (VR) to train medical students, residents and healthcare professionals in key areas of mental health care. This past year, CAMH has developed and launched novel VR simulation-based programs focused on suicide risk assessment and opioid overdose management. Both VR modules will be scaled to additional students within medicine, nursing and other healthcare professions. Faculty Leads: Drs. Petal Abdool, Michael Mak, Ahmed Hassan, Allison Crawford.

• Scaling Evidence Based Early Psychosis Models of Care – Early Psychosis Intervention-Spreading Evidence Based Treatment (EPI-SET) is CIHR-SPOR-funded project that brings together youth, family members, front-line clinicians, policymakers and researchers to implement a standardized model of early psychosis care known as 'NAVIGATE' to ensure every young person receives recovery-oriented care as part of their EPI treatment. Partnering with communities across Ontario, the project has now shown that NAVIGATE enhances fidelity to the standard, improves functional outcomes at the patient level, is viewed with great enthusiasm via qualitative data by youth and their families, and was supported via tremendous engagement of the youth and family advisories. This next year, CAMH will partner with the Centre of Excellence for Mental Health and Addictions to scale and spread NAVIGATE across additional communities in Ontario. The team includes Dr. Aristotle Voineskos, Augustina Ampofo, Lillian Duda, Dr. Sophie Soklaridis, Dr. Sanjeev Sockalingam, Dr. Nicole Kozloff, Dr. Janet Durbin, Dr. Paul Kurdyak, Dr. George Foussias, Dr. Melanie Barwick, and many more.

• Launch of First-Ever Canadian Youth Mental Health Platform – This pioneering youth mental health project funded by Brain Canada and powered by RBC Future Launch will use a state-of-the-art informatics platform that serves as a foundation to improve mental health for youth across Canada. It brings together leaders in data science and youth mental health creating federated datasets related to youth hubs, youth cohort studies, and youth intervention studies.