November 2025

This month's brainbuzz™ features findings from a new collaborative study with ICES about long-stay psychiatric inpatients with intellectual and developmental disabilities; a 1-year recap of the Digital Innovation Hub; and an invitation to the Research Institute's annual Research Day.

October 6-10 marked Mental Illness Awareness Week, with October 10th being World Mental Health Day. CAMH shared timely resources, tools, and research throughout the week. These days serve as a reminder that mental health matters just as much as physical health, and accessing care is a right -- not a privilege.

Aristotle Voineskos
Senior VP Research & Science; Joint VP, CAMH-UHN Partnership

Patients with intellectual and developmental disabilities substantially over-represented among long-stay psychiatric inpatients

Enhancing specialized supports both in hospital and in the community could reduce their length of stay and admission rates.

Individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD) account for more than one in five patients who have been in Ontario’s mental health beds for over a year, according to a new study from researchers at ICES and CAMH.

The findings suggest that people with IDD have different support needs compared with patients without IDD as they are more likely to have moderate or severe cognitive impairment, difficulty caring for themselves, and few

social supports, which may contribute to challenges transitioning out of hospital and into the community. Enhancing specialized supports both in hospital and in the community could reduce their length of stay and admission rates.

“We know what is needed for successful transitions and we have published Ontario Practice Guidance on how to do this well,” says Dr. Avra Selick, lead author and scientist within the Azrieli Adult Neurodevelopmental Centre at CAMH. “There are amazing champions out there working hard to support these transitions, but we urgently need to build capacity in the hospital, community and health and social services sectors to work together to achieve widespread change.

Key Findings:

Of the 1,466 patients in Ontario mental health beds for over a year on September 30, 2023, 322 were people with IDD.
Compared with inpatients without IDD, a higher proportion of those with IDD were younger and had a psychotic disorder. Almost 40 per cent of these individuals were autistic.
Patients with IDD were more likely to be physically restrained or experience seclusion in hospital, and only five per cent were in specialized units for people with IDD. The remainder were in other psychiatric units where providers were not trained to work with them.
More than half of long-stay patients with IDD lacked social or familial connections to support their discharge from hospital.

The authors recommend increasing capacity and developing the expertise of providers within hospital settings to deliver appropriate care for patients with IDD. They also recommend enhancing outpatient mental health services, housing, and disability-related supports in the community. These strategies can prevent unnecessary hospitalizations, reduce length of stay and support successful transitions back into the community.

Resources on how to support transitions out of hospital for patients with IDD are available through the H-CARDD program led out of CAMH.

"Adults with IDD make up a substantial proportion of long-stay admissions in units that were not designed to meet their needs, with very few hospital staff trained to support this population," says Dr. Yona Lunsky, ICES scientist and Director of the Azrieli Centre at CAMH. “We need to invest in improving their care once they are in hospital while also addressing the challenges that lead to these lengthy hospitalizations in the first place.”

The study “Long-stay psychiatric inpatients with and without intellectual and developmental disabilities: an Ontario population-based study” is in the September issue of The Canadian Journal of Psychiatry.

About ICES (Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences)

ICES is an independent, not-for-profit research and analytics institute that uses population-based health information to produce knowledge on a broad range of healthcare issues. ICES leads cutting-edge studies and analyses evaluating healthcare policy, delivery, and population outcomes. Our knowledge is highly regarded in Canada and abroad and is widely used by government, hospitals, planners, and practitioners to make decisions about healthcare delivery and to develop policy. For the latest ICES news, follow us on BlueSky and LinkedIn: @ICESOntario

Celebrating One Year of the Digital Innovation Hub

One year after its launch, the Digital Innovation Hub (DIH) at CAMH has quickly become a catalyst for transforming mental health care through technology.

In a recent editorial published in JMIR, the official journal of the Society of Digital Psychiatry, Dr. Gillian Strudwick, Director of the Hub, reflects on the Hub’s mission and the critical infrastructure needed to turn digital mental health innovations from promising pilots into sustainable, impactful tools embedded in routine care. “By operating across four integrated streams and providing infrastructure that supports the full innovation journey, the DIH helps overcome the common pitfalls that hinder digital mental health innovations,” writes Dr. Strudwick. “It offers a model for embedding, scaling, and sustaining digital mental health innovation, and it does so by bridging evidence, experience, and implementation.”

Read the full story here

Research Day 2025

Join us for the Campbell Family Mental Health Research Institute’s Research Day on Friday November 21, 2025! Spaces are limited, register here to secure your spot.

Buzz-Worthy News

Dr. Sean Kidd joined us to discuss results from studies that reported 619 heat-related deaths during the 2021 Western Canada heat dome, and his work with partners and collaborators, to develop guidance for clinicians, patients and their families, to prevent future harms.

Congratulations to CAMH scientists Dr. Peter Zhukovsky and Dr. Shreejoy Tripathy on being named recipients of the Brain Canada Future Leaders in Canadian Brain Research grants! This national program provides early-career scientists with $100,000 each to pursue bold, high-impact ideas in brain health research.

The SUMMIT Trial, led by Senior Scientist Daisy Singla, found nearly 70% of perinatal patients with depression also experience trauma symptoms. A brief therapy, Behavioural Activation, eased both—whether delivered by specialists or trained non-specialists, in person or online.