Achieving health equity

Dr. Aislynn Torfason knows there are gaps in the mental health care system. She experienced them in her early years, as a Métis woman growing up in the remote community of Churchill, Manitoba (“Polar bear capital of the world, kind of our claim to fame,” says Dr. Torfason). She witnessed these gaps during her medical education, attending the Northern Ontario School of Medicine in Thunder Bay. And she sees them every day in her multidisciplinary role as a clinician educator at CAMH, helping people in crisis in the Gerald Sheff & Shanitha Kachan Emergency Department.

“There was a time when one of our CAMH Elders performed a healing ceremony and smudging ceremony for an Indigenous patient. The next day, the individual was presenting completely differently,” says Dr. Torfason. “It was instrumental in the mental health care they were receiving and the outcome would not have been the same without that traditional healing component.”

Deeply passionate about education, Dr. Torfason is a teacher and mentor for medical students and residents early in their careers. She understands the need to train more mental health professionals across Canada in order to meet the growing demand for services, especially in remote areas.

“CAMH is amazing and continues to grow, but even still, it’s so hard to meet everyone’s clinical needs⁠—there’s always work to be done,” says Dr. Torfason. “Having the Research & Discovery Centre here will build capacity. Research gives us information we don’t know, particularly around some of our more marginalized and vulnerable populations. How do we know how to meet the needs of these populations if we don’t know what their needs are? Researchers find the answers and then people like me can integrate them seamlessly into our clinical settings, which is pretty amazing.”

As a Métis physician, Dr. Torfason says CAMH’s No One Left Behind campaign hits particularly close to home. It also reinforces to her that CAMH is the ideal place to improve mental health equity and care for those who need it most.

“I love CAMH. I can’t imagine working anywhere else,” says Dr. Torfason. “The fact that we are taking real steps toward this goal of ‘No One Left Behind’ is so meaningful to me, meaningful to my family, and meaningful to people who are important in my life. It’s incredibly powerful and I am so proud to be a part of it.”