>Would you agree to chemotherapy treatment if there was no evidence to support its effectiveness in treating cancer? Every day, we benefit from medical advances that are rooted in decades of rigorous research and evaluation to improve our physical health. Unfortunately, our mental health has not received the same attention. Until now, Canada has lacked a large-scale, coordinated effort to collect evidence on the effectiveness of different treatment approaches to improve mental health and addiction services. HRI is working to change this. The evaluation of available services is a vital step toward better care. Until we start measuring outcomes, we have no basis for determining how to use limited resources to provide as much benefit as possible for as many people as possible. We cannot afford to waste scarce resources, especially when the demand for treatment is so great.
>Dr. Jean Costello, Research and Evaluation Scientist, leads HRI’s evaluation program and is guiding the growth and expansion of the Recovery Journey Project, a flagship model for measuring treatment outcomes. HRI has also engaged Dr. Brian Rush, a leading international expert in evaluation and Scientist Emeritus with the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, whose expertise has been invaluable to the development of the Recovery Journey Project.
>Recovery Journey Project :The Recovery Journey Project is a multi-year research study that aims to better understand the recovery process among those who receive mental health and addiction treatment. It is one of the only longitudinal studies in Canada designed to measure key indicators of recovery over time. The data collected can be used to monitor and evaluate treatment quality and effectiveness, generate new knowledge about the recovery process, and help shape the future of mental health and addiction treatment in Canada. The Recovery Journey Project is conducted and led by researchers at Homewood Research Institute (HRI). HRI works directly with key treatment providers to collect data from former patients and clients. Results from the study will be shared with many different audiences including the participants themselves, treatment providers, researchers, and the general public.
>App Evaluation Project : Mental health apps provide fast and cost-effective access to portable resources that aim to help people experiencing mental illness and addiction. But with little to no research to support the claims of app developers, healthcare providers and consumers struggle to select and make the best use of these resources.
>HRI has partnered with the RBC Foundation to conduct a large-scale evaluation of mental health apps. The project has two phases:
>Develop a framework to evaluate the effectiveness of mental health apps, and
>Identify top-quality apps aimed at addressing mental health problems, specifically among youth (pending further funding).
>Ontario Perception of Care : The Ontario Perception of Care – Mental Health and Addictions (OPOC-MHA) tool, a validated tool developed by Dr. Brian Rush and colleagues (Rush, Hansson, Cvetanova, et al., 2013), was designed to meet the need for a perception of care tool that could be used in both mental health and addiction settings in Ontario for the purpose of informing, monitoring and evaluating quality improvement efforts at the program/service- and system-levels. The tool was designed to measure residents’ perceptions of care in seven domains: access/entry to services, services provided, participation/rights, therapists/support workers/staff, environment, discharge/leaving program/treatment and overall experience, including recovery/outcome and service quality.