Canada is one of the most ethnically diverse countries with Black people representing the third-largest population of racialized people in Canada. Research shows that Black children and youth in Canada experience more challenges to accessing mental healthcare. Evidence also shows that Black youth who do not access treatment are likely to face difficulty in school, family conflict and increased contact with the justice system. This review looks at literature on the barriers and facilitators to mental healthcare for Black youth in Canada.

Hope by CAMH is a free smartphone app that provides suicide prevention information, tools and crisis resources to support and guide individuals when they are experiencing thoughts of suicide.

One of the key features of this app is the ability for individuals to create a personalized suicide safety plan, which can be done in consultation with their healthcare professional, loved one, or someone who they have a trusting relationship with.

Compassion is a critical component of delivering effective health care services, especially those aimed at improving mental health.

As we continue to see widespread adoption of digital technologies (such as virtual care, mobile apps and patient portals) it remains unclear how their use may affect the delivery of compassionate mental health care. For this reason, it’s important to understand the relationship between the two and to explore how compassionate mental health services can be better delivered through and with digital technologies.

Recovery education centres are intended to help people who are experiencing mental health problems and illnesses by focusing on their strengths, personal growth, empowerment, and choice. But there's limited evidence on the outcomes of people who participate in these centres, especially among those who have experienced homelessness.

In the early stages of the global COVID-19 pandemic, the Ontario government put a number of measures in place to prevent the spread of the virus, which included closing schools and encouraging physical distancing. The impact of these measures on the mental health of those in adolescence, a critical developmental stage, was worrisome yet unknown.

For this reason, researchers at Western University set out to explore teens’ stress related to COVID-19 and its relationship to their daily behaviours and other indicators of psychological distress. 

Attached is a fun and interactive learning tool developed by Hands The Family Help Network to support staff in learning the basics of Infection Prevention & Control (IPAC) in a Jeopardy-style game format.

As an organization with multiple work locations, Hands the Family Help Network was challenged with tracking the attendance of staff across their various sites. Also, in  order to ensure maximum occupancy is not exceeded at the sites, a method for collecting adequate records for contact tracing was required. The tracking system needed to be cloud-based and available on any handheld device (such as a cell phone), to make it easy to use from wherever staff might be located (i.e., office, community, home, school, etc.). 

CAMH developed a new resource highlighting a social prescribing pilot and how health and social service providers can apply lessons learned to their work with older adults.

The Greenstone region includes five small communities and six First Nations, spread across 3,172 square km., with limited resources for their large geography. The Greenstone Collaborative has already been established for several years, holding regular meetings to work on local issues. With the pandemic, the communities found themselves with decreased staffing and were also lacking volunteers since seniors, who are particularly vulnerable to COVID-19, make up a large portion of Greenstone’s volunteers.

Check out this new resource that was created by a group of organizations in Thunder Bay to help close the gap in access to technology in the community.