PAPER# 8: Human Resources in Collaborative Mental Health Care: Overcoming the Barriers in Canada
This paper provides an understanding of the key health human resources issues and trends in collaborative mental health care in Canada. Health human resource barriers concerning collaborative mental health care include: legislation and policy, remuneration, scope of practice and liability. There are also barriers that affect interprofessional education and peer support. The approaches and solutions to overcoming these barriers are summarized based on Canadian and international experiences. The paper concludes by identifying information gaps requiring further research and providing key recommendations.
Key Findings
- Level of funding for collaborative mental health care delivery is limited and new funding and remuneration models and incentives are needed to facilitate collaboration in the long term.
- Comprehensive strategies and policies are needed to build a stronger mental health workforce that addresses shortages, workloads, planning, access to data on mental health providers and service gaps.
- While there is some progress with legislative and regulatory reforms in adopting collaborative scopes of practices, it is inconsistent among the provinces and territories. Opportunities are being explored to implement legislative infrastructures for collaborative practice.
- Given the uncertainty about how malpractice and liability will impact the implementation and accountability of collaborative mental health care, providers may be reluctant to provide collaborative care. Dialogue and research have begun to explore collaborative practice within malpractice reform.
- Interprofessional education is a priority at the federal level but progress is needed at the provincial and territorial level as well as the practice level.
- Peer support programs have played a key role in the recovery phase of individuals with mental illness and addiction in Canadian communities. However, more is needed to understand how the peer support programs interact with mental health providers and what role these programs play in collaborative mental health care.
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