Promoting Collaborative Care in Canada: The Canadian Collaborative Mental Health Initiative

The Canadian Collaborative Mental Health Initiative was funded in December of 2003 as part of Health Canada's Primary Health Care Transition Fund. Representing 12 national organizations, its goals were to promote greater collaboration between mental health services and primary care services. Over its 2 years mandate the CCMHI developed 12 background papers on different aspects of collaboration in Canada and produced 12 toolkits to assist providers, learners and consumers in establishing and working productively within collaborative partnerships. It also worked with the 12 partner organizations to develop a charter, which articulated principles to guide collaborative care and the commitment of the partners to implement these principles. The CCMHI broadly disseminated its findings to providers, funders, and planners of mental health and primary care services through a variety of modalities and has laid a solid foundation on which future collaborative mental health activities in Canada can be built.