Patient Oriented Evaluation & Policy Framework

What the project is about:

Anxiety and depression are the most commonly experienced mental health disorders across the lifespan and around the world. According to the World Health Organization, depression is the leading cause of disability worldwide with enormous social, psychological, and economic costs. For example, the Mental Health Commission of Canada recently estimated the cost of mental illness in Canada to be $42.3 billion in direct costs and $6.3 billion in indirect costs. Without critical research and evidence-based intervention, these costs will continue to grow—if nothing changes, it is estimated that around 9 million Canadians will be living with a mental illness within a generation.

Despite the high prevalence and devastating impact of anxiety and depression in youth, many critical gaps remain in our knowledge about the early identification and treatment of children and youth with these illnesses and our ability to effectively intervene and change long term trajectories remains limited.

Development of the Calgary Centre for Child and Adolescent Mental Health (CCAMH), made possible by the ongoing Build Them Up campaign, offers a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to develop and implement a parallel, world-leading mental health research program right here in Calgary. This program will be firmly anchored in the population of children and youth seeking services in the Centre. For the first time in Canada, a multi-disciplinary patient-engaged and patient-oriented research program will be closely integrated with a community-based mental health centre, creating a direct pipeline from discovery to care in one setting. As a core platform of the CCAMH, the goals of this project include:

1. To include the patient/family/caregiver voice in informing mental health research priorities, questions and design;

2.To support patients/families/caregivers, clinicians and researchers to work together and build capacity to integrate patient-oriented research (POR) into mental health services and supports for children and youth (and their families), primarily at the Centre for Child and Adolescent Mental Health (CCAMH); and

3. To use impact evaluation and an understanding of the socioeconomic impact of mental health research to inform policy and resource allocations and improve delivery of responsive and supportive services across the life-course of children and youth (and their families).

Publications:

See our paper in Health Expectations

See our Communiqués: July 2021 and April 2023

Presentations:

This work has been presented at the following conferences: the Owerko Centre Conference (June 2022), Canadian Association for Health Services and Policy Research (CAHSPR) conference (June 2022), 2022 Northwest SPOR Collaborative Forum (October 2022), International Society for Quality of Life Research Annual Conference (October 2022), and Alberta Children’s Hospital Research Institute (ACHRI) Research Retreat (December 2022 and December 2023), and the Canadian Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry Conference (September 2023).

Co-Principal Investigator:

Maria Santana

DiPo Team Members:

Erin McCabe

Bishnu Bajgain