Annual Report 2022-2023: Unity Health Toronto - St. Joseph’s Hospital

Submitted by Dr. Mariam Abdurrahman, Psychiatrist-in-Chief

This was a year full of change on the backdrop of continued Pandemic pressures on the Mental Health and Addictions Program at SJHC and the broader Hospital. We saw changes in program leadership, increased human resource gaps and increased challenges to keep learners engaged reduced in person clinical capacities. We were able to adapt in creative ways to maintain a desirable mix of rotation options for family medicine residents so that rotations were entirely in person and continued to provide psychiatry residents with excellent rotations, notably in our emergency and crisis clinic, child and geriatric psychiatry settings. This was all concurrent with hosting the inaugural cohort of clinical clerks at this site. We had a number of exciting developments as noted below.

Key Accomplishments:

• Opening of Neurostimulation Program: Addition of the first rTMS machine in 2022. Planned expansion to include another rTMS machine and outpatient ECT in 2023.
• Revamp of day hospital to a Day Treatment Program offering prolonged LOS and hybrid in person-virtual modality. The new program features ACT modality of therapy, sensory modulation and behavioural activation.
• Academic expansion: the inaugural cohort of CC3 clerks commenced in October 2022.
• Primary Care-Mental Health Initiative: Opening of a medication and metabolic management clinic that also offers short-term primary care provision to patients without primary care access; the clinic identifies new community primary care providers to transition patients to on discharge from the mental health program.
• Expansion of inpatient transitional aged youth (TAY) program to include an outpatient bridging component.
• Milestones: the retirement of founding psychiatrists with a 20-30 year history in our program.