Perspectives on Health and Tech 

How CAMH is Advancing Mental Health Through Innovation and Social Justice

Listen in for a timely conversation in recognition of Mental Health Awareness Month and National Nursing Week. In this episode, Dr. Gillian Strudwick from The Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH) and Danny Gladden from Oracle Health discuss how mental health care is evolving, and how CAMH is advancing care through the dual lenses of technology and social justice. Learn how AI tools like Oracle Health Clinical AI Agent are easing clinician workloads, how CAMH is using data to drive impact, and why framing mental health as a social justice issue is key to helping the CAMH team deliver more equitable and compassionate care.

Featuring:

Dr. Gillian Strudwick, Chief Clinical Informatics Officer, The Centre for Addition and Mental Health

Danny Gladden, LCSW, MBA, Director, Behavioral Health and Social Care, Oracle Health

Listen as they discuss:

o   The Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH) background – 2:45

o   Mental health care viewed as social justice work at CAMH and examples – 5:00

o   Technology innovations at CAMH with a human-centered approach – 9:30

• • Wearable devices and the impact they have on research
  • Repetitive Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (RTMS) treatment
  • Evidence-based apps and the integration of these into clinical care processes
  • Optimizing EHR use and exploring the opportunity to share mental health notes in Canada

o   CAMH’s perspective on AI technology and its potential impact on clinicians – 18:25

Notable quotes:

“Mental health is social justice work.” – Dr. Gillian Strudwick

“To be able to deliver compassionate care in this day and age, we have to be innovative in our use of technology.” – Dr. Gillian Strudwick

CTA:

Learn how Oracle behavioral health solutions combine real-time, clinical data from across each patient’s unique healthcare journey and how Oracle is working to reduce the documentation burden on physicians and elevate the patient experience with the Oracle Health Clinical AI Agent.

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Episode Transcript:

Intro  0:00   - 0:29

Welcome to perspectives on health and tech podcast brought to you by Oracle Health. In this series, we have conversations on creating a seamless and connected healthcare world where everyone thrives. Let's get started.

 

Danny 0:30 – 01:44

Welcome to perspectives, Oracle Health and Life Sciences podcast. I'm your host today. Danny Gladden, I'm a licensed clinical social worker and general manager of behavioral health and social care here at Oracle Health. As we step into the month of May, we recognize Mental Health Awareness Month, a time to raise awareness reduce stigma and highlight progress in mental health care. I'd also like to give a special shout out to our nurses across Canada and the US as we celebrate National Nursing week. Thank you for your unwavering dedication and compassion. Social workers and nurses make great teams. Today, we're honored to be joined by a leader in mental health care innovation. Please welcome Dr. Gillian Strudwick from CAMH, the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, Canada's largest mental health and addiction teaching hospital and one of the world's leading research centers in its field. So, Gillian, welcome. Before we dive into big topics here, can you introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about the great work happening at CAMH.

 

Gillian 1:45 – 03:47

Thank you, Danny, and thank you for the opportunity to be a part of this great podcast. I might break this into two sections. First, I'll introduce myself, and then I'll tell you a little bit about the organization that I'm fortunate to work for. I'm Dr Gillian Strudwick. I'm a registered nurse, and I've worked primarily in mental health clinical settings here in Toronto, Canada, and also in other parts of Canada and internationally. Currently, I am the inaugural Chief Clinical Informatics Officer at CAMH, representing our nurses and all of our non-physician health disciplines, like social work. And I have a couple of other hats as well. So one is that I'm the head scientist of the digital mental health lab, and I'm also the scientific director of our Digital Innovation Hub, which is about really accelerating our work in this digital sphere and research practice, education and beyond.

So that's about me, but I'll move on to talking about CAMH. So CAMH is C, A, M, H, the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, and it's Canada's largest mental health and addictions teaching hospital. We think, and I think there's lots to suggest that we're true in saying this, that we're a world leading Research and Education Center on mental health, and we're located right in the heart of downtown Toronto, but we serve people across our province, Ontario and across the country as well. In terms of a few numbers that I'll share with you, we've had just over 16,000 emergency department visits in the last year, over 40,000 patients that were treated, over 80,000 virtual care appointments. And I'll provide a few more numbers here as well, almost 8000 RTMS visits, 60 million in a new research funds more than 1000 articles published. I think you get the point that there's a lot going on at CAMH, and it's a great place to be.

 

Danny 03:48 – 04:50

You know, I have been on your campus a number of times. I always appreciate that your campus is right in the heart of Toronto, in a bustling area, and I think there's, there's no greater way to reduce stigma than, you know, placing such a well-respected mental health and addiction treatment organization right in the heart of the city. Whereas if you go to many other communities, you'll kind of see the mental health hospitals and treatment providers kind of on the outskirts of town. Really appreciate CAMH’s role right there in the heart of Toronto. And I think this goes into something Gillian that you speak about passionately, which is the idea that mental health treatment is social justice. For our audience, tell us what you mean by that. Why is it an important lens - social justice, which you view your work?

 

Gillian 4:51 – 07:43

I think it's quite an important point that you bring up, Danny, and it's something we're really proud of talking about, that mental health work is social justice work. Part of doing social justice work is to be informed in this space. And part of being informed is understanding that mental illness disproportionately affects marginalized communities who are also often facing barriers to things like accessing care, and this could be due to racism, poverty, stigma, geography, and I could continue so on and so forth. At CAMH, we see mental health is deeply rooted in social justice, because access to care, dignity and treatment and prevention are not actively distributed. CAMH advocates for policies and systems change that ensure mental health care is not a privilege but a right. And so that's really our social justice lens, framing and shaping the last few statements that I made.

We have done some work more recently in the last couple of years on dismantling anti-black racism, which has become a more formalized organizational commitment. I'll just read a section from one of our documents around dismantling anti-black racism. And excuse me for it sounds like I'm reading here because I'm reading from a document, but systemic anti-black racism, is a barrier to high quality h