May 4, 2016 - The Cundill Centre for Child and Youth Depression is working to gather and evaluate the quality and the ability to implement all available clinical practice guidelines developed for child and youth depression through its clinical practice guidelines project.
The Centre will also launch three initiatives to kick-start its operation:
- The Child and Youth Psychotherapy Initiatives project, aims to better understand the positive and negative experiences of children and youth who have received a course of psychotherapy for depression. Focus groups will be conducted with children, youth, and their parents, and the knowledge gained will be used to develop an “Adverse Event” tool that will help monitor the side-effects of psychotherapy.
- The Relapse Prevention Tool Project will help the 60 per cent of youth with depression who are at risk of relapse by extending the depression-free period before relapse occurs. This will be achieved by developing a profile of those at risk of relapsing and using it to create a mobile phone app that will aid in monitoring and reporting early relapse indicators. The relapse profile will be based on a survey of treated depressed patients and will be tested.
- The Primary Care Screening Tool Project will reduce the population risk for depression and its related impairment by developing and evaluating a population-based model for child and adolescent depression. This will involve designing screening and intervention tools that will help primary care providers identify concerns and intervene at an early stage.
“CAMH is excited about the potential impact of the Cundill Centre for Child and Youth Depression,” says Dr. Peter Szatmari, Chief of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry. “We hope to make a real difference in the lives of kids who suffer from depression by making best practice guidelines readily available and by improving screening and treatment. We will bring innovation and discovery to a field that has been resistant to real advances and bring that new knowledge to clinicians around the worlds".
The Cundill Centre, established thanks to a generous $15 million dollar gift from The Peter Cundill Foundation, will establish a global network of scientists, clinicians, and other professionals who will bring research, care, and education expertise to lead the advancement of knowledge in the prevention and treatment of child and youth depression.