$35 million gift will help improve mental health treatment at CHEO and SickKids
A $35-million donation — divided between CHEO and SickKids pediatric hospitals — is enabling better, more precise
treatment for children and youth with mental illness
.
At a time when emergency room visits for
young people with mental illness
are spiking, the donation from philanthropist Bruce McKean and the Waverley House Foundation will transform the ability of health professionals to target treatments for better outcomes, say researchers.
“Traditional mental health treatments are our best and most current option for children and youth. But for up to half of the kids we see in hospital for these issues, standard treatments just don’t work,” said
Dr. Kathleen Pajer, senior scientist with the CHEO Research Institute
and director of the CHEO Precision Child and Youth Mental Health Collaboratory, whose work is benefiting from the donation.
“This gift changes what is possible for children’s mental health and by working together we can implement programs on multiple levels, ensuring that breakthroughs can benefit children across Canada.”
As part of the donation, researchers at Ottawa’s CHEO and Toronto’s SickKids will work together to advance precision mental health care.
Precision mental health care uses data and research — from the DNA code to a postal code in the words of research officials — to tailor treatment to each person’s unique biology, environment, lifestyle and experiences in contrast to a one-size-fits-all approach for medication and treatment.
The standard way of assessing and treating mental illness in children and youth involves gathering information about symptoms and what has gone on in the patient’s past, said Pajer. “But we don’t collect information on how your brain functions.”
As part of a pilot project, CHEO recently introduced a version of neuropsychological testing for children and youth. The testing helped analyze and highlight the strengths and weaknesses of their cognitive function, key to how successful certain treatments would be.
The key was to “tailor treatment to match their strengths and minimize their weaknesses, which hopefully would make the treatment more individualized so they would get better faster,” said Pajer.
Tailoring medication is key to precision care. DNA testing for medication is now available to help determine which medications will be the most effective. Genetics, as well as lifestyle, can interfere with how effectively medication works, so lifestyle adjustments might also help tailor the treatment, she said.
The funding is helping to support infrastructure and specialized equipment needed for the Precision Child and Youth Mental Health Collaboratory, as well as highly specialized scientists.
More than a dozen pilot projects have been launched through the donation, which was dispersed earlier this year.
“Thanks to the generosity of the Waverley House Foundation, we can move beyond a one-size-fits-all approach and advance precision mental health care that’s based on genetics, we can diagnose earlier and treat more effectively.”
The donation comes from Ontario philanthropist Bruce McKean, who was revealed last year to be the mystery donor behind the largest cumulative gift to mental health in Canadian history. His $203-million donation to Toronto’s CAMH has been called transformative and historical. He has also donated to the Royal and elsewhere.
McKean is a former diplomat, public servant and mining executive whose foundation, Waverley House, is based in Ottawa. It is named after the Ottawa street where his family lived for decades. The foundation is committed to increasing knowledge about the causes of and cures for mental illness, something McKean has experienced among close friends and family.
McKean was not born into money. He became wealthy after investing in his son-in-law’s startup — which became Shopify. Shopify founder Tobi Lutke worked on that start-up from a bedroom of the McKean family home in Ottawa.
For years, McKean donated anonymously, but in 2024, he was convinced to go public to help encourage people to think about the mental health crisis visible all around them.
Some quick pediatric mental health facts from CHEO and SickKids
- Two million Canadian children and youth are affected by mental illness;
- Emergency room visits for mental health are up by more than 60 per cent over 10 years;
- About 70 per cent of mental health challenges begin early in life;
- 20 per cent of Canadian youth are affected by mental illness but just one in five receive the mental health services they need;
- Suicide is the second leading cause of death among youth and young adults between 15 and 34;
- Up to 50 per cent of children admitted to hospital do not respond to recommended interventions “due to inadequate treatment specificity for their needs.”
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