June 22, 2009

Our new Canada Research Chair, Kate Tilleczek, is currently on the National Advisory Committee of the Canadian Mental Health Commission's Evergreen Project for a Framework for Child and Youth Mental Health in Canada. Since Canada does not have a national strategy for child and youth mental health, and since the World Health Organization (WHO) has called for "a national address of child and youth mental health concerns," the work of this committee has important national significance. Canada needs a national framework to support health decisions that tend to be made nationally, despite whatever provincial supports are put in place.

This framework, called Evergreen, will "compliment and may provide child and youth context to the Mental Health Strategy for Canada currently being developed by the MHCC" (Mental Health Commission of Canada). Funding for Evergreen has come from MHCC and the IWK Children's Health Centre.

Evergreen comprises over 100 worldwide experts from various aspects of child and youth mental health, as well as parents and youth who have been directly affected by mental health issues. Evergreen representatives also plan on soliciting opinions and information from the general public.

A statement from the framework committee reads as follows:

We have called the project Evergreen to evoke the image of an ever-evolving framework that can be updated to remain relevant to the changing needs of Canadians. We hope that Evergreen's process will be self-sustaining and that within 3 to 5 years of completion, the framework will be reengaged by interested parties, this time to incorporate new research, new evidence, and new perspectives on child and youth mental health. We hope that this process will then continue in 3 to 5 year cycles into the foreseeable future. Thus this process will be "evergreen."

Full story and source: Kutcher, S.&A. McLuckie. "Evergreen: Towards a Child and Youth Mental Health Framework for Canada." Journal of the Canadian Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry. 18(2): May 2009. Online.