Publications
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Resources for professionals

CAMH Resources for Professionals reflect our mission and one of our core goals: to discover, share and apply new knowledge to help improve the lives of those affected by addiction and mental health problems and promoting the health of people in Ontario and beyond. Our publications and other resources can help professionals across the province apply the latest research, best practices and innovative approaches to client care.

 Exposure to Psychotropic Medications and Other Substances during Pregnancy and Lactation: A Handbook for Health Care Providers
Developed through a partnership between Motherisk and the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health
A great deal of misinformation exists about women’s use of substances during pregnancy and lactation. A health care provider’s challenge is to know the true risks and benefits, both to the mother and to her fetus or baby, of taking versus stopping the use of a medication or other substance. Yet the average provider is not well equipped to give the best advice to women who are pregnant or breastfeeding and exposed to psychotropics...

 

NEW! Working with Immigrant Women: Issues and Strategies for Mental Health Professionals
Working with Immigrant Women explores how multiple identities—such as age, race, gender and class—among other social identities—intersect to influence immigrant women’s mental health. By bringing together various theoretical, research and clinical perspectives, we have attempted to capture the complexity and diversity of immigrant women’s experiences.

 

 NEW! Online Self-directed Tutorials
The Mental Health and Addiction 101 series
consists of a variety of quick, easy to use online tutorials for anyone who wants to learn more about mental health and addiction topics. This series includes tutorials such as: Introduction to Addiction, Anxiety Disorders, Bipolar Disorders, Depression, Older Adults, Posttraumatic Stress Disorders, Schizophrenia, Stages of Change, Stigma and more.


Best Practice Guidelines for Mental Health Promotion Programs: Children & Youth
This web-based resource helps service providers to integrate best practice approaches in their mental health promotion interventions for children (7–12 years of age) and youth (13–19 years of age). The resource identifies 10 best practice guidelines, and provides theoretical background plus practical resources for planning and implementing mental health promotion initiatives with children and youth.

Promoting positive mental health for people aged 55 and older will be the focus of the next guide in the series for promoting positive mental health across the life span, coming early in 2008.

 

UPDATED: Building the Path to Home: Links to sustainable housing for persons with a dual diagnosis in Toronto
Housing is only sustainable for someone if they have a strong, caring safety net or support network. This guide includes information about how to access housing, but it also talks about how to find all the pieces of support needed to make the housing situation work.

November 2007
The guide has been redesigned to make it easier to access and use. We have made some revisions to the information to reflect changes in the developmental services sector. Please note that we are experiencing some problems with our search function that we are hoping to resolve shortly; apologies for any inconvenience.


Highs & Lows: Canadian Perspectives of Women and Substance Use
Highs & Lows draws on the latest theory and research to offer strategies for improving practice and developing policy to support women with substance use problems. It includes contributions from nearly 100 experts in women's substance use including academics, counsellors, psychiatrists, researchers, program administrators, alternative health care providers, women's health advocates and women whose lives have been personally affected by substance use.


Growing Up Resilient: Ways to Build Resilience in Children and Youth
Resilience is an important aspect of mental well-being. Bouncing back from today’s stresses is one of the best life skills children and youth can develop. Growing Up Resilient is a must-read for adults (including parents, teachers and front-line workers) who want to increase resilience in the children and youth in their lives.

 

Partnering With Families Affected by Concurrent Disorders: Facilitator's Guide
Family members are often the primary support for people who have substance use and/or mental health problems. We know that these caregivers are likely to experience significant physical, emotional, social and spiritual stress. Although there are a growing number of interventions designed to help and support family members, many agencies do not see this as their mandate, and—if they do—it is secondary to the job of working with the person diagnosed with substance use and/or mental health problems.


Essential Writings in Violence Risk Assessment and Management
With Essential Writings in Violence Risk Assessment and Management, mental health and legal practitioners have quick access to the most important peer-reviewed writings in this field. The 31 journal articles and book chapters in this collection provide a complete foundational curriculum on the subject.

 

The Culture Counts Project
The Culture Counts Project is a provincial project that aims to research, identify and develop a best practices model for community education and knowledge exchange in mental health and addiction with culturally / linguistically diverse communities to ensure that programs effectively meet the needs of these communities.


Staff Pocket Guide to CAMH Services For Families
A list of services provided by CAMH provides a variety of programs for families at each of its four main sites as well as at satellite offices. Also, unless indicated otherwise, services are open to non-CAMH as well as CAMH client families.

 




Strengthening Families For The Future
Strengthening Families for the Future is a prevention program for families with children between the ages of seven and 11 who may be at risk for substance use problems, depression, violence, delinquency and school failure. Strengthening Families is effective because it involves the whole family.


The Smoke-Free LTC Homes Project at CAMH
The Smoke-Free LTC Homes Project at CAMH is designed to provide education and support for LTC (Long Term Care) Homes in the transition to a new and safer healthcare environment and to build capacity within the LTC Home sector to sustain smoke-free environments...


Alcohol and Drug Problems: A Practical Guide For Counsellors (excerpts)
Alcohol and Drug Problems covers a broad range of counselling issues and provides practical guidance on meeting the needs of a diverse client population.  Written for both new and experienced counsellors, this fully revised and expanded third edition draws on up-to-date research findings, clinical experience and case studies.


Youth & Drugs and Mental Health: A Resource for Professionals (excerpts)
A package that includes material for working with youth who present concurrent mental health and substance use concerns, with information on integrated treatment, screening, assessment, pharmacotherapy, motivational interviewing and First Contact: A brief intervention for young substance users with mental health problems. The First Contact component includes clinical materials such as session goals, therapist checklists and client handouts, to be used in four individual or group sessions that can serve as a stand-alone treatment or a first step to more extensive treatment.


UPDATED: Building the Path to Home: Links to sustainable housing for persons with a dual diagnosis in Toronto
Housing is only sustainable for someone if they have a strong, caring safety net or support network. This guide includes information about how to access housing, but it also talks about how to find all the pieces of support needed to make the housing situation work

November 2007
The guide has been redesigned to make it easier to access and use. We have made some revisions to the information to reflect changes in the developmental services sector. Please note that we are experiencing some problems with our search function that we are hoping to resolve shortly; apologies for any inconvenience.


Antisocial and Violent Youth: Volume II (excerpts)
Antisocial and Violent Youth: Volume II offers valuable summaries of the latest research findings from over 70 professional scientific journals. Covering the literature from 1998 to 2002, these abstracts show more research on bullying, advances in knowledge about risk and protective factors, and effective methods of prevention and treatment.


Hear me, Understand me, Support me: What young women want to know about depression
Hear Me, Understand Me, Support Me explores the diverse challenges that young women experience in relation to depression; prevention strategies; healthy helping relationships; the dos and don’ts of working with young women; and referrals and resources that can provide more information. Each section has three key features: “Hear Me,” “Understand Me” and “Support Me.”


Structured Relapse Prevention: An Outpatient Counselling Approach (Excerpts)
In the substance use treatment field, it is recognized that strategies used to initiate change are different from those used to maintain change. With the goal of helping clients effectively maintain change in their substance use behaviours, we have revised and expanded CAMH’s successful Structured Relapse Prevention: An Outpatient Counselling Approach. Structured Relapse Prevention (SRP) is a brief, cognitive-behavioural, manual-based counselling approach that is used in a variety of settings. SRP is designed for people with moderate to severe substance dependence, and is typically delivered in eight to 12 group or individual counselling sessions.


TAPP-C: Clinician's Manual for Preventing and Treating Juvenile Fire Involvement (Excerpts)
An invaluable guide designed specifically to address firesetting and all other types of inappropriate fire involvement by youth. It provides a conceptual framework and useful techniques for mental health clinicians working with children, teens and their families. 

 

A Guide to Addiction Information Referral for Settlement Services Professionals
This guide provides an introduction to basic addiction issues and the current treatment system. It serves as a quick reference guide for professionals working in settlement services, who are accustomed to dealing with a range of issues. The contents are taken from a variety of information sources available at CAMH. 


Brief Couples Therapy: Group and Individual Couple Treatment for Addiction and Related Mental Health Concerns
This manual is a tool for therapists and counsellors working in substance use settings who would like to augment their practice by seeing couples. It will also be useful for the practitioner who is seeing couples, and who would like to be able to offer a focused, specific program for clients presenting with substance use issues.


Bridging responses: A front-line worker’s guide to supporting women who have post-traumatic stress
Many women who seek help from front-line services have experienced past violence and trauma. Often they do not recognize that many of their difficulties might be associated with responses to complex post traumatic stress. Bridging Responses is a resource for front-line staff who work with women - in health care, literacy, corrections, housing and community services. This book offers information and tools to help recognize responses to post-traumatic stress in women’s lives, and to establish a level of confidence that encourages women who have survived abuse and violence to consider referrals to appropriate services or resources.


First stage trauma treatment: A guide for mental health professionals working with women (Excerpts)
Many women seek treatment for depression, chronic anxiety, substance use problems, self-harming behaviour, suicidal thoughts and feelings of self-hate and emptiness. These problems are often responses to complex post-traumatic stress, associated with chronic abuse and neglect in childhood. Many mental health professionals do not have the practical tools to provide the trauma treatment that these women need. First Stage Trauma Treatment gives therapists key information and strategies to help women clients develop fundamental skills to manage these responses.


Treating Concurrent Disorders: A Guide for Counsellors (excerpts)
If you work with clients who have substance use or mental health problems, you are undoubtedly already working with people who have concurrent disorders. If you are committed to understanding and working with clients as whole persons, then you need to understand what these problems are, how they co-occur and how you can help...With this book, our goal is to take information about concurrent disorders beyond academic and scientific discourse, and to make it accessible to a wider range of readers. We hope that counsellors across a diverse range of services will be better able to work with this client population, and that people with co-occurring substance use and mental health problems will get the comprehensive care they need.


Postpartum Depression: A Guide for Front-Line Health and Social Service Providers
Excerpt: Chapter One: Clinical Overview
Chapter One describes the affective states that are common following childbirth, focusing on postpartum depression (PPD); other disorders described include the baby blues and pinks, postpartum anxiety and psychosis. The chapter will differentiate between the disorders, and highlight problems and symptoms that may require intervention.

Asking the Right Questions 2: Talking with clients about sexual orientation and gender identity
Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgendered, transsexual, two-spirit, intersex, and queer (LGBTTTIQ) people have specific life factors that relate to substance use and/or mental health problems. Asking the Right Questions 2 will help service providers create an environment where all clients feel comfortable talking about their sexual orientation and gender identity.


Responding to Older Adults with Substance Use, Mental Health and Gambling Challenges
Responding to Older Adults is for people who work with older adults in their homes, in the community and in long-term care, including personal support workers, health care aides, meals-on-wheels and friendly visitor volunteers, and staff and supervisors at seniors' centres, residences, apartments and nursing homes.

 

Choosing to Change: A Client-Centered Approach to Alcohol and Medication Use by Older Adults
Choosing to Change is a practical handbook for anyone who comes into contact with older adults who have problems with the use of alcohol and/or psychoactive medications. The book uses brief case histories to illustrate the distinct nature of alcohol and medication use among people in this age group. It includes a monitoring form that can help people keep track of their drinking.


CAMH Publications Catalogue
We offer unique publications maintains for therapists, doctors, nurses, front-line workers, and other professionals, as well as materials for clients and their families who look to us for up-to-date resources on addiction and mental illness.


Continuing Professional Education
CAMH classroom courses are designed to build on your experience, encourage self-reflection, and enhance problem solving courses. In addition, we offer a number of online courses, and some community-based courses designed for addiction, mental health and human service providers in Ontario. 


Admission and Discharge Criteria and Assessment Tools (ADAT)
Admission and Discharge Criteria and Assessment Tools (ADAT) produced by CAMH are now available online. ADAT is a comprehensive approach to establishing an initial treatment plan which identifies the most appropriate level and intensity of care for a client entering Ontario's addictions treatment system (or whether the client is ready for discharge). Information is available about CAMH ADAT online training.


Concurrent Disorders Resources
For those with diagnosis of both addiction and mental health problems:

  • Both Addictions and Mental Health - Concurrent Disorders Priority Knowledge Exchange Projects
  • Beyond the Label : An Educational Kit to Promote Awareness and Understanding of the Impact of Stigma on People Living with Concurrent Mental Health and Substance Use Problems
    Beyond the Label (PDF only; 4.95 MB) has been developed to support people working in the fields of mental health and/or addictions by providing them with an interactive framework to discuss, learn, understand and reflect on the impact of stigma on people living with concurrent mental health and substance use problems
  • Treating Concurrent Disorders: A Guide for Counsellors - Preface and Introduction (see above for more information).


Dual Diagnosis Resources
A diagnosis of both a developmental disability and emotional, behavioural or psychiatric difficulties

  • Guidelines for Managing the Client with Intellectual Disability (Dual Diagnosis) in the Emergency Room
    These guidelines provide a simple to follow framework for understanding and assessing medical and mental health issues that are often the reason for the emergency room visit. It is our hope that with this information, the clinical experience for both hospital staff, the client and their supports is optimized.
  • Dual Diagnosis in Provincial Psychiatric Hospitals: A Population-Based Study Year 1 Summary June 2000

Resources for Teachers and Schools - resources for teachers and schools that follow the Ontario curriculum on addiction and mental health.


Child, Youth and Family Resources page
The Child, Youth and Family Resources section is a gateway to information about programs and services at CAMH for children, youth and families. It is of interest to health promotion workers, parents, and anyone who works with children and youth. Through the links below you can access information on our health promotion and substance use prevention programs and products as well are our treatment programs and research studies.

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Content updated: April 22, 2008 5:02 PM
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