The CHAT Project: Paediatricians and Mental Health Clinicians: Working Together for the Sake of the Children

Introduction: The Shared Care model, originally developed to address the paucity of adult mental health resources, has potential applicability to the design and delivery of mental health services for children and youth. With a similar prevalence of mental illness and more difficulty accessing mental health care than adults, Canadian children and youth have been even less well served than their parents. As there is a significant overlap in the types of health concerns for which children and youth are seen by mental health clinicians and paediatricians, building improved collaboration between these groups is an obvious, though under-utilized, method of enhancing mental health care for this population. The CHAT project was a one year collaboration involving three different types of collaborative activities between mental health clinicians and paediatricians. Methods: Out-patient mental health clinicians and community paediatricians were surveyed about their educational needs and interests. A community paediatrician joined an outpatient mental health care team, continuing professional educational activities were provided by each group for the other and were evaluated. Results: The paediatrician's participation was evaluated positively by team members. Eighty-three percent of mental health clinicians (n=10) rated the educational sessions positively and 77.8%(n=7) noted increased knowledge. Paediatricians expressed strong interest in having more mental health-related educational activities. Conclusion: This small project provided opportunities for useful exchanges between mental health clinicians and community paediatricians and preliminary evidence that shared care initiatives for children and youth should be further researched.