Annual Report 2022-2023: Women’s College Hospital (WCH)

Submitted by Dr. Simone Vigod, Head of the Department of Psychiatry at WCH

Over 2022-2023, the Department of Psychiatry at Women’s College Hospital continued to lead initiatives advancing clinical care, education and research in particular in the areas of women’s mental health, equity, and virtual care. New initiatives include a partnership with WCH's Transition-Related Surgeries (TRS) program to offer mental health support for pre- and post-op TRS patients that will help offer direct and indirect mental health care and contribute to improving the mental health aspects of the TRS program through education. Our department has also launched an initiative focusing on Black maternal mental health to better understand the experience of Black perinatal patients so we can identify and address any treatment gaps. This will be done by gathering data on the trajectory of patients through the RLS program and through qualitative interviews with patients. The Trauma Therapy Program’s clinical team has continued to guide patients through a staged approach to healing from trauma, is exploring novel strategies to provide foundational trauma psychoeducation through virtual tools and platforms (PORTAL study randomized controlled trial) and expanding community capacity by training community partners to offer our foundational trauma group (Resourced and Resilient), currently evaluating the first wave and planning for scale and spread.