Toronto facility ‘integrates with urban fabric’

The Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH) in Toronto was the subject of a presentation, ‘You’ve Changed’, at May’s Design in Mental Health 2018 conference, by Jonathan Wilson, Principal and UK Healthcare Sector lead for Stantec, a multidisciplinary design practice. He was himself involved in this ambitious and unusual scheme. The Network’s editor, Jonathan Baillie, reports.

Speaking in a session on ‘Personal Space’ on the first day of Design in Mental Health 2018, Jonathan Wilson explained that he would be focusing on the masterplanning of the CAMH site, located in downtown Toronto. The reconfiguration of the former asylum site was ‘very interesting from a mental health perspective’, but also ‘spoke to personal space’ – being ‘very much about the relationship between an individual and the broader environment’. Jonathan Wilson’s presentation covered CAMH as a mental health provider, the development of the site from a 19th-century asylum to a contemporary mental health campus, and the building projects currently under construction. 

He began: “The acronym, CAMH, stands for the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, an organisation very much committed to changing the face of mental health – both in terms of the service, and the way people with mental health difficulties are actually experiencing their own lives.” CAMH, Jonathan Wilson explained, is Canada’s largest mental health teaching hospital, and one of the world’s leading research centres in its field. It is affiliated with the University of Toronto, and is a Pan American Health Organization/World Health Organization Collaborating Centre. He said: “CAMH’s ethos is based on three key ‘pillars’ – treatment, research activity, and engaging the community. The staff are committed to bringing these three elements together, within an integrated and broad range of services. It is more than just the words… I have seen some of the work they do, and it’s very impressive.”