The Mental Health System: Mechanisms for Improving Mental Health System Responsiveness

Presentation by Catherine Pryce on what is needed at each tier and across the continuum of mental health care to ensure appropriate services are available to support emerging adults.

About the conference

We hosted the first Canadian Consensus Conference on the Mental Health of Emerging Adults: Making Transitions a Priority in Canada in 2015 to create an open dialogue and generate a broad consensus on their unique mental health needs. Facilitated by our Knowledge Exchange Centre, the conference brought together 200 emerging adults, their families and caregivers, service providers, and policy makers from across the country stakeholders from across the country to develop a consensus statement with concrete recommendations to  advance policy and services for EAs in Canada. The conference Jury and EA panel identified a number of foundational characteristics of a reformed system – one that is better able to meet the mental health and problematic substance use needs of emerging adults.

About Catherine Pryce

Catherine Pryce holds a Bachelor of Science in Nursing from the University of Toronto and a Master of Nursing from the University of Calgary. She holds adjunct appointments with the Faculty of Nursing and the Department of Community Health Sciences at the University of Calgary and has worked in healthcare in Canada for 40 years, primarily in public health and addiction and mental health. Prior to her retirement in May 2015, she worked for Alberta Health Services and its predecessor Calgary Health Region, providing strategic leadership to diverse teams of clinicians in the development, design, and implementation of provincially integrated priorities and quality improvement programs in addiction and mental health.