Congratulations to Drs. Manuela Ferrari and Martin Lepage, who each received one of five prestigious awards through the Bell Let’s Talk-Brain Canada Mental Health Research Program. This program, which is funded through a partnership between Bell Canada and Brain Canada/Health Canada, provided a total of $4,190,000 to support outstanding research teams who are developing innovative solutions to provide effective, sustainable, and accessible mental health care for everyone in Canada.
“Across Canada, we have seen that the COVID-19 pandemic is exacerbating peoples’ mental health and substance use problems. Thanks to the Bell Let’s Talk-Brain Canada Mental Health Research Program, and the hard-working researchers, more Canadians and Indigenous Peoples will have access to the mental health and substance use supports they need – today, and every day. Because there’s no health without mental health.” – The Honourable Carolyn Bennett, Minister of Mental Health and Addictions
The Bell Let’s Talk-Brain Canada Mental Health Research Program recipient teams include some of the best researchers from across the country in mental health. We are proud to highlight that of only five projects supported across Canada, two are from the Douglas.
Five Canadian research teams receive major grants to address gaps in mental health care highlighted by the COVID-19 crisis
- A Randomized Sham-Controlled Trial of Accelerated Intermittent Theta Burst Stimulation for Treatment Resistant Depression – team led by Daniel Blumberger, Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH)
- AID-ME: Artificial Intelligence in Depression – Medication Enhancement: A Randomized, Patient and Rater Blinded, Active-Controlled Trial of a Deep-Learning Enabled Clinical Decision Aid for Personalized Depression Treatment Selection – team led by Manuela Ferrari, Douglas Research Centre, McGill University
- BEAM: Building Emotional Awareness and Mental Health in Parenting. An app-based intervention to improve postpartum mental health and support children’s brain development – team led by Catherine Lebel and Lianne Tomfohr-Madsen, University of Calgary
- Promoting cognitive health in schizophrenia with online psychological interventions: A national implementation strategy centered on a digital learning platform – team led by Martin Lepage, Douglas Research Centre, McGill University
- Optimization of Prefrontal Theta-Burst Stimulation to Treat Depression: A Bench to First-in-Human Study – team led by Tarek Rajji, Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH)
The projects were selected following a rigorous peer-reviewed grant competition that engaged an international panel in evaluating projects grounded in scientific excellence and with the potential to quickly address gaps in mental health research. To view the research projects, please visit Bell.ca/LetsTalk.
View Dr. Manuela Ferrari's project · View Dr. Martin Lepage's Project
The Bell Let’s Talk-Brain Canada Mental Health Research Program has been made possible by the Canada Brain Research Fund (CBRF), an innovative arrangement between the Government of Canada (through Health Canada) and Brain Canada. To date, Health Canada has invested over $130 million through the CBRF which has been matched by Brain Canada and its donors and partners.