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Autumn 2007 | Vol 11 No 1

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Sheila Lacroix

Collaborative mental health care

Overview
The Ontario Division of CMHA, is a good first stop for an overview of mental health reform and shared care initiatives. Under Mental Health System, see the section on Health Care Reform for key policy documents for reform at both the federal and Ontario provincial levels, provided in chronological order since the 1980s. Recurrent themes include community-based continuum of service, integration with other health and social services and shared service support. Under Primary Care, see links to major initiatives in both Ontario and Canada, including CCMHI (www.ccmhi.ca), covered extensively elsewhere in this issue of CrossCurrents, and Shared Mental Health Care (SMHC) in Canada.

Key Partners
SMHC’s Collaborative Working Group was formed by the College of Family Physicians of Canada (CFPC) and the Canadian Psychiatric Association (CPA) in 1997 to implement recommendations made in the first SMHC report, and continues to develop and promote professional training, evaluation tools, and protocols. Its work involves contributing to the development of the CCMHI Toolkits. The Collaborative Working Group also tracks projects and initiatives in shared care across Canada and hosts an annual conference. See the February 2007 issue of the Canadian Journal of Psychiatry, available free online at www.cpa-apc.org, for an example of a current initiative: Depression and Its Management in Primary Care. It includes a guest editorial by Dr. Roger Bland, active in the Working Group, followed by two reviews, one of which includes implications for practice. Canadian Family Physician, CFPC’s monthly journal, available free at www.cfpc.ca, is another good resource for primary care support. For example, the March 2004 issue had two CME articles, Treating Bipolar Disorder: Evidence-Based Guidelines for Family Medicine followed by Shared Mental Health Care: Model for Supporting and Mentoring Family Physicians.