This report addresses the findings of the Family Health Team (FHT) Survey conducted by the Ontario Psychiatric Outreach Program and the Centre for Rural and Northern Health Research at Laurentian University. This survey was part of a research project intended to better understand how mental health services are being integrated within FHTs in smaller communities in Northern Ontario. It focused entirely on FHTs in small rural communities scattered across the regions of the North East and North West Local Health Integration Networks. The survey found that some FHTs see mental health as being an “add on” service, rather than a core service. A challenge for rural FHTs is how to balance the need to maximize resources with providing patient-centered care.
To read more about the survey findings, check out EENet’s Research Report Round-up on the report, “Mental Health Services in Smaller Northern Ontario Communities: A Survey of Family Health Teams.”
Research Report Round-ups are brief summaries of research reports, presented in a user-friendly format. To read EENet’s clear-language summaries of these reports, and others, visit www.eenet.ca.