A new report indicates a rising demand for youth mental health and addictions care in community settings.
The report, entitled The Mental Health of Children and Youth in Ontario: 2017 Scorecard, was recently released by the Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences (ICES). It provides updated insights into the performance and utilization patterns of child and youth mental health and addictions services in Ontario. The new report serves as an update to ICES’ 2015, comprehensive baseline scorecard report, which provided a first look at the system performance of this healthcare sector.
A key update to the 2017 report is the inclusion of 13 new indicators for mental health and addictions care provided in the community sector as the 2015 report consisted of acute and outpatient physician care data only. The findings of the community indicators released indicate that in 2015/2016 more than 120,000 children and youth accessed mental health and addictions services in community settings.
The report was formally launched through a Research Symposium, attended by policy makers, researchers, service providers and other key stakeholders with interest in mental health and addictions data and performance measurement in Ontario. A series of infographics on the key themes and findings are available online, with forthcoming publications to include a comprehensive indicators results package and a technical appendix explaining how the results were calculated and interpreted.
The preliminary findings for the adult mental health and addictions system performance scorecard were also discussed at the symposium, with the anticipated public release date by the end of 2017 through a report. CMHA Ontario has co-chaired the Task Group dedicated to the development of the adult mental health scorecard with ICES. This scorecard was endorsed by the Mental Health and Addictions Leadership Council in their 2016 Annual Report. More information on the development of this scorecard for the adult sector can be found on our website.