Chair’s Introduction

First and foremost, the Department is an active community of extraordinary people comprising undergraduate medical students, graduate students, psychiatry residents, fellows, and faculty members. It remains Canada’s largest psychiatry department. In the 2022-2023 U.S. News & World Report, it was ranked as the 8th academic department of psychiatry in the world, up from 12th in 2016.

Collectively, our faculty members have the depth and breadth of scientific expertise needed to innovate. Our research contributes to the understanding of mental disorders and their treatment in a wide breadth of areas, and we provide national and international leadership in teaching and education scholarship. Our training programs prepare learners to care for diverse communities and enact changes to better deliver existing treatments to patients.

Over the past five years, in alignment with the focus of TFOM, a major strategic priority of the Department has been to explicitly incorporate the principles of Equity, Diversity, Inclusion, Indigeneity, and Accessibility (EDIIA) in all we do. Key changes have included the creation of a new Vice Chair position dedicated to EDIIA; requiring unconscious bias training for all faculty members; implementing more transparent and equitable hiring and promotion processes; and a new mentorship program so that everybody can get mentored if they desire.

Clinician investigators and scientists are distributed in, and supported by, our 20 affiliated hospitals and other training sites. Over the past ten years, the Department has developed processes to identify and support the next generation of researchers, from medical students (summer training), to residents (a renewed Clinician Scientist Program, a new Clinician Scholar Program, and new Clinician Researcher Track), to fellows and assistant professors (with the new Academic Scholar Awards and multiple internal seed and pilot funding opportunities). Research productivity has continued to be commensurate with the size of the Department, with growth in grant funding and publications; we continue to publish the largest number of peer-reviewed scientific papers among our peer departments of psychiatry.

Advances in education have included the implementation of five subspecialty streams plus two additional streams focused on research and indigenous mental health, the new Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada Competence by Design (CBD) curriculum, and the Azrieli Brain Medicine Fellowship Program. We offer our trainees a unique breadth of clinical experiences to prepare them to address the needs of patients and the challenges in the Canadian health care system.

With these advances acknowledged, it still feels that we have to do more. Severe mental illnesses have become the leading cause of disability worldwide, and half of North Americans are now reporting that they are stressed or mentally unwell. The question of if and how the Department should focus its resources and expertise have been raised in the 2019 and 2024 Five-Year Reviews.

Our external reviewers provided their astute observations and thoughtful comments about the strengths and potential weaknesses of the Department, providing recommendations in two areas.

The external reviewers highlighted the potential benefits of fostering integration and collaboration across clinical sites is necessary to ensure we are efficiently using our resources. Greater coordination can help us ensure that faculty members who are focusing on the same areas are connecting. Through our Research Hubs and cross-site fellowships, we can foster greater collaboration and allow our faculty to make progress more quickly.

The external reviewers also highlighted the need to resolve inherent tensions between academic and community sites and needs. The Department is currently reviewing the structure and location of its core residency rotations. It has committed to expanding its core residency training to two major sites: Trillium Health Partners and Scarborough Health Network. We will continue to foster connection with all our community partners through open communication and engage them in education strategy.

Addressing these areas will help us better refine how we allocate resources and prepare future psychiatrists for their careers.

As we navigate the complex challenges posed by mental illness, the Department will continue to lead Canada in training and supporting the next generation of academic psychiatrists who will need collaboration, creativity, and courage to offer a better future to those living with severe mental illness.

Dr. Benoit Mulsant, Professor and Labatt Family Chair of the Department of Psychiatry