All eyes on research at Centre for Child & Adolescent Mental Health

One in five Canadian kids today struggles with mental health challenges. More so, scientists know more about mental health disorders in adults than about how they emerge in childhood.

By expanding knowledge of childhood mental health, there is an opportunity for advancing new treatments and providing better prevention of many conditions in kids.

An innovative facility is being built and designed in northwest Calgary to bring about these opportunities, thanks to a partnership between the University of Calgary, the Alberta Children’s Hospital Foundation and Alberta Health Services (AHS).

The Centre for Child and Adolescent Mental Health will provide a suite of new services, including a walk-in clinic, intensive treatment services and a day hospital, to help young people and their families identify and rapidly manage mental health challenges such as depression and anxiety.

The centre is being funded through strong community support for the Alberta Children Hospital Foundation’s BuildThemUp campaign and events like RBC Race for the Kids, which will funnel all registration and fundraising dollars to the centre. To close the knowledge gaps and break new ground in child mental health, a research framework will integrate with services and generate new biological, translational and clinical data that can be used to develop, test and refine interventions — a pipeline from discovery to care, all under one roof.

The Centre for Child and Adolescent Mental Health, image above, will provide a suite of new services built around a research framework.

It’s a visionary plan led by the directors of the Mathison Centre for Mental Health Research and Education at the Hotchkiss Brain Institute (HBI) and the Owerko Centre at Alberta Children’s Hospital Research Institute (ACHRI), both in the Cumming School of Medicine (CSM) and funded by the community through the Alberta Children's Hospital Foundation.

The centre is built upon UCalgary expertise in epidemiology, health economics, imaging science, medical genetics, psychiatry and psychology. It will comprise researchers from faculties including CSM, arts, social work, nursing, the Werklund School of Education, as well as the CSM’s O’Brien Institute for Public Health, and the School of Public Policy.

"This is a transformational first for Canada." - Dr. Susan Graham

“The mental health centre for children and youth has created a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to create a patient-oriented multidisciplinary research program that is closely integrated with a community-based mental health centre. This is a transformational first for Canada,” says Dr. Susan Graham, PhD, HBI member and director of the Owerko Centre at ACHRI, who co-leads the research program with Dr. Paul Arnold, MD, director of the Mathison Centre and also a member of the HBI.

Susan Graham, PhD, is the director of the Owerko Centre at ACHRI, a member of the HBI and a professor in the Department of Psychology in the Faculty of Arts.

"Our vision is that this research program will foster a learning mental health care system. Patients  will contribute to the generation of new knowledge, which is then fed back into the system to inform new treatments and better outcomes for patients, families and the community at large," says Arnold.

As a central access point of care, the centre will enable teams to rapidly engage and recruit families in critically important studies, Graham notes. It will allow experts a way to identify biological mechanisms and social and psychosocial markers in order to design better treatments.

“This centre will enable us to work with children with mental health conditions ranging from anxiety to Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, depression, substance use and beyond,” says Graham. The team will work with children who are at very different points in their mental health journey — providing the opportunity to understand and intervene at all stages.

Every research project will be evaluated to define effectiveness, transferability and socioeconomic impact. By applying this lens, the team hopes they will gain new insights that will assist local and provincial policy-makers in future decisions around child mental health funding and services. It will be built in the community of Hounsfield Heights — chosen because of its proximity to the Alberta Children’s Hospital and the university — and will serve thousands of kids and families each year.

The research potential is enormous, according to Dr. Chad Bousman, PhD, a pharmacogeneticist and assistant professor at CSM. "I think we really are pushing the boundaries here, and it’s going to be watched by the international community.”  Bousman is a member of ACHRI and part of the team that’s building out the research framework.

“There’s a lot of potential here for us to be models for the rest of the world, and the most exciting piece is the integration of clinical practice and child mental health research under one roof.”

Paul Arnold is the director of The Mathison Centre for Mental Health Research and Education, a member of the HBI and professor in the departments of psychiatry and medical genetics.

Chad Bousman is an assistant professor in the departments of medical genetics, psychiatry, and physiology and pharmacology and is a member of the Owerko Centre at ACHRI and the Mathison Centre at the HBI in the CSM.

Susan Graham is the director of the Owerko Centre at ACHRI, a member of the HBI and a professor in the Department of Psychology in the Faculty of Arts.

This story has been reprinted with permission from the University of Calgary

'I have found my light again': Julia Caddy says centre will help other kids in darkness

Julia Caddy may be a student at McGill University - she is very much the teacher in other aspects of life.

Julia is a passionate advocate for mental health. You may have seen her on TV commercials for the Centre for Child & Adolescent Mental Health. She shared her personal mental health journey in 2018 to illustrate what this centre means to young people like her. We are honoured to share it again with you now.

This is Julia's story.

Today in Canada, suicide is one of the leading causes of death for people in my age group. I know way too many teenagers who have tried to take their lives. And way too many who have wanted to. In fact, I’m one of them.

When I was in Grade 8, I was diagnosed with anxiety and depression. I was prescribed medication and I went to weekly counselling, but in January of Grade 9, I was hospitalized because I was suicidal and had developed an eating disorder.

This might sound weird, but I actually didn’t think I was “sick enough” to need help. There’s so much stigma around mental health, and the way it’s portrayed in the media is so sensational that - since I didn’t look like those people on TV or in those ads - I didn’t think I deserved the help I needed. I didn’t have cancer. I didn’t have a broken leg. I had a broken mind. And since it was my mind that was broken, I found myself faced not with chemotherapy or a cast, but instead with shame and denial.

Looking back now, I understand that what I was dealing with was just as serious as other life-threatening illnesses kids are facing in this hospital. But I didn’t get it back then.

Once I got here, a team of incredible people saved my life. They intervened medically … and then helped me find myself again. I’m in a much better place today and am so grateful to have gotten the care I needed in time. I owe this hospital my life.

The sad thing is there are too many young people who don’t know what to do when they’re overwhelmed by mental health issues. They don’t know where to turn for help. Or sometimes, even if they do know they can go to Emergency, they’re nervous about going to a hospital.

So when I heard about the new Centre, I was thrilled. And hopeful. And grateful that people want to build a place for young people just like me. It’s a chance to remove some of the stigma. And to provide help for kids as soon as they’re not feeling well.

I’m sharing my story with you today because I believe it’s incredibly important to talk about mental health – to normalize conversations about it. Actually, I think teenagers deserve some credit for talking about it way more than people my parents’ or my grandparents’ age ever did.

I truly believe ours is the generation that can change how the world approaches mental health.

Of course we can’t do it alone. We need initiatives like this Centre. And we need support and understanding from more people like all of you.

To all the individuals and families who are facing mental illness: I promise you there is light.

I have found my light again, and the hope is that this Centre will bring back that light to each and every young person who finds themselves in darkness.

Help when it's needed most: One mother's journey in search of mental health support

Ryley Leganchuk recently graduated high school with honours. He’s won leadership awards. He’s coached 12-year-olds in football. And now he has dreams of teaching elementary school kids.

It’s a bright future and a new page that closes out the darkest chapter in his family’s life.

Ryley was just a boy when his mother, Micah, spotted warning signs. He said things that reflected an anguish beneath the surface, things a five-year-old boy shouldn’t be feeling or saying. It frightened his mom.

"We were desperate for help."

“While at the time we had no idea that children could suffer from depression, we knew it wasn’t just an attention-seeking phase,” she recalls. “We sought counseling, read parenting books, spoke with doctors, teachers – anything we could think of to help our son. While we frantically looked for answers, things continued to get worse.

“We were desperate for help. I was heartbroken watching my son suffering and not being able to do anything to take his pain away.”

Ryley was nine years old when he first attempted to end his own life.

Finding support at the Alberta Children's Hospital

It was a devastating time for the family, who found the support Ryley needed at the Alberta Children’s Hospital where he was admitted into the Mental Health Unit. It meant handing over care of their son at a time when they just wanted to be with him.

“Despite how wonderful the doctors and nurses were, I would cry when I had to leave him and longed to take him home with us. I knew what we were doing was the right thing, but it was the hardest thing we ever had to do,” Micah recalls.

His time at the Alberta Children’s Hospital allowed Ryley to learn new coping skills and new tools to handle tough situations. At the same time, his family discovered new insights into Ryley’s condition, which was the result of biological factors and not something his parents did or didn’t do.

His condition improved, and then it declined again. Ryley continued to endure feelings of hopelessness and despondency and would go on to act on those feelings two more times.

“Like 50% of children with mental health conditions, current therapies had limited effect on him,” says Micah. “Despite the coping skills he learned, his struggles continued, and we as a family lived on eggshells.”

The break in the clouds came when Ryley was 14. He took the opportunity to participate in research around non-invasive brain stimulation for teens with depression, one of many studies the Alberta Children’s Hospital has conducted to improve the lives of kids.

Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation, or TMS, alters the level of activity in a section of the brain that regulates emotion, attention span and the ability to organize, plan and function as a responsible adult.

Every weekday for three weeks, Ryley went to the donor-funded TMS lab to watch his favourite episodes of The Simpsons while the team sent magnetic waves into his brain.

“Over the next few months, we started seeing a change in our son. He went from having two weeks of bad days to maybe one bad day a month,” says Micah.

Ryley was able to keep up his studies while undergoing treatment thanks to the Gordon Townsend School. It’s a CBE school in the hospital that keeps their noses in books while they have outpatient care and therapy.

He embraced life again. The troubling phone calls Micah used to receive from school officials were replaced by updates saying what a joy Ryley was to have in class. He began coaching kids in football, and he became a mentor to others.

“Some parents of the kids he coaches have told us how much Ryley has made a difference in their children, including with their own mental health issues.”

Like many of us, Ryley still has good days and bad days. Thankfully the bad days are fewer and further between, and Micah credits the support and care he received from the Alberta Children’s Hospital.

With support from the community, the Centre for Child & Adolescent Mental Health will pull together all the best components of Alberta Children’s Hospital care and research and put it under one roof that will be wholly dedicated to helping kids and families before mental health challenges escalate into crises that require hospitalization.

There is a critical need for more specialized mental health services for children in our community, and the Centre for Child & Adolescent Mental Health will be there for kids who need it, when they need it, so more families can have brighter futures, just like the Leganchuks.

“Our son wouldn’t be where he is today without the Alberta Children’s Hospital and our community rallying behind it.”