Improving Ontario’s Mental Health and Addictions System
Mental health affects us all – either personally or through a colleague, family member or friend. In fact, over 1 million Ontarians each year experience a mental health challenge which can have a serious impact on their overall quality of life.
Your PC Government recognizes the importance of ensuring Ontarians across the province have access to a comprehensive and connected mental health and addictions system. To that end, Christine Elliott, Deputy Premier, Minister of Health and MPP for Newmarket-Aurora, today launched the Roadmap to Wellness: A Plan to Build Ontario’s Mental Health and Addictions System.
This roadmap is a step in the right direction toward ensuring all Ontarians can access high-quality services and supports, where and when they need them. “By improving the availability and quality of community-based mental health and addictions supports, and by better connecting Ontarians with these services, this new roadmap will help alleviate growing pressures on our hospitals and, in doing so, significantly support our goal of ending hallway health care,” said Elliott.
A new Mental Health and Addictions Centre of Excellence within Ontario Health will be the foundation on which Roadmap to Wellness is built, and will drive the implementation of the strategy’s four main pillars:
- Improving Quality
- Expanding Existing Services
- Implementing Innovative Solutions – This includes the launch of Mindability, a new, first-of-its-kind in Canada program that will provide evidence-based cognitive behavioural therapy to prepare Ontarians of all ages with the lifelong skills they need to manage their mental health and overall well-being.
- Improving Access
To enable this plan, the PC Government is investing $3.8 billion over 10 years to create new services and expand programs. We have already started to fill urgent service gaps through immediate investments, including $174 million more in annualized funding for mental health and addictions programs in 2019-2020.