Hope is often found in unexpected places. At CAMH, you can find hope on your phone. 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.

For Tim Rankin, creating Hope was professionally and personally significant.

“My wife has suffered from depression and anxiety for many years,” he says. “One night she made a suicide attempt. Thankfully, she survived. Her psychiatrist advised that she create a safety plan to identify personal warning signs, coping strategies, and so on, that she could reference to help avoid a crisis or guide her through one. This was a bit of a relief for me, but the plan was on paper and I feared she might not have it with her when she needed it most.”

The initial team included Tim, Operations Manager with CAMH’s Information Management Group, who would manage and oversee the submission, Nicole Thomson, Senior Director of Quality Innovation, who would provide the quality, patient safety and academic perspective, and IT Specialist Gurpal Bubbra, who would build the app. They won the 2019 CAMH Innovation Award, which included a small amount of funding to support further development. As the app evolved over the past eighteen months through rigorous feedback and consultation, the team expanded to include more experts from across CAMH.

“Suicide prevention is a quality and patient safety priority at CAMH. It’s a required organizational practice across the hospital and it’s embedded in our clinical processes,” says Nicole Thomson.

The app is available on Android and iOS, giving people around the world access to this life-changing tool, and most of all, giving them hope.

CAMH researchers have found the suicide rate for people with schizophrenia spectrum disorders (SSD) to be over 20 times higher than the general population. The study of 20-years of population data, believed to be the largest of its kind, examined statistics on over 75,000 patients who received a first diagnosis of SSD. On average, each patient was followed for almost ten years and identified several risk factors that were predictors of suicide.

“What this study teaches us is that although people with SSD are at higher risk for suicide, we can target those at the highest risk with changes in policy and treatment,” said lead author Dr. Juveria Zaheer, Clinician Scientist at the CAMH Institute for Mental Health Policy Research.

The researchers suggest that treating psychosis must also include suicide prevention safety planning. They also recommend increasing the age limit for admission to first episode psychosis programs (most are closed to people over 30) and increasing the length of clinical follow-up care after a first episode of psychosis.

“Now that we know what is happening, we need to better understand why,” says Dr. Zaheer. “Our next step will be to study the lived experience of people with SSD who have had suicidal ideation.”

There is a significant gender gap when it comes to mental health. Research often overlooks the differences in how women experience mental illness, while women researchers face biases as they work to advance their careers. CAMH launched womenmind to tackle these unique gender issues in mental health.

A $5-million gift from Sandi and Jim Treliving and family, coupled with a $1.5-million donation from Hudson’s Bay Foundation, will enable CAMH to put a defined focus on closing the gender gap in mental health. womenmind will fuel philanthropy focused on accelerating discovery related to improving the mental health of girls and women and supporting female-identifying researchers to become leaders in the sciences.

In its first five years, womenmind will raise funds to advance a number of initiatives such as recruiting new female scientists, providing early career start-up support, holding research and seed grant competitions, offering mentoring programs for women in science, and hosting an annual global research symposium.

“womenmind is an opportunity for us to bring women in philanthropy together through a shared vision, lift up the voices of women living with mental illness and advance women in science. There’s no better place to do all of that than at CAMH,” says Sandi Treliving.

Employee mental health is one of the most important issues facing workplaces today. The economic burden of mental illness in Canada is estimated to be a staggering $51 billion each year. Half a million Canadians miss work each week due to mental illness. It’s a leading—and costly—cause of disability in Canada.

In response, CAMH, in partnership with BMO, launched a first-of-its-kind Workplace Mental Health Playbook for Business Leaders. This evidence-based resource was created with input from CAMH researchers and clinicians, and business leaders. It provides a path to more effective solutions and better outcomes for employees and for businesses, with five key recommendations and examples of best practices in the workplace. CAMH’s Workplace Mental Health Playbook for Business Leaders has been downloaded more than 4,500 times to date.

Prioritizing and addressing mental health in the workplace is the right thing to do for employees, and for the bottom line. When done effectively, the potential impacts to business include higher performance, lower absenteeism and reduced disability costs.

As Canadians navigate the “new normal” of work during the COVID-19, business leaders can rely on the Playbook as they build mentally health workplaces where everyone can reach their full potential. CAMH has also released a pandemic-specific supplemental resource—designed to work hand-in-hand with the existing Playbook—to help business leaders support employees’ mental health through this time and beyond.