About Southern Alberta Shared Mental Health Care

The primary goal of the Shared Care program is to support family physicians in their provision of mental health care to their patients. Through the collaborative work of the Shared Care consultant and family doctor, the majority of patients improve and manage their mental health without requiring further community services.
  
Shared Mental Health Care in Southern Alberta was originally begun following the results of surveys conducted within the Calgary Health Region of both the consumers and providers of mental health services. These surveys clearly indicated that existing hospital-based mental health programs, while generally regarded as being of high quality, were either difficult to access because of excessive wait-times or exclusion criteria, or were often inappropriate for the patients’ needs (Calgary Regional Health Authority and Provincial Mental Health Advisory Boards Integrated Mental Health and Psychiatric Services Final Report, April 1997).
 
In response to this indication of insufficiency in the mental health service delivery system in the Calgary Health Region, a Shared Mental Health Care (SMHC) model was implemented in late 1998 under the joint sponsorship of the Calgary Health Region and Alberta Mental Health Board (AMHB), and with the financial support of the Health Transition Fund. This project formed part of the Alberta Primary Health Care Project. The Shared Mental Health Care project, under these auspices, ran until June 2000.  The Calgary SMHC service continues to this day, albeit under different funding arrangements.

In 2003, the Calgary Shared Care model was extended throughout Southern Alberta with the support of Alberta Health and Wellness' Capacity Building Fund.   The new funding allowed for the hiring and training of a number of additional mental health consultants (i.e., psychiatrists, psychologists, nurses), as well as the recruitment and payment of a number of physicians in various rural centres throughout Southern Alberta.  By the summer of 2006, Shared Mental Health Care in Southern Alberta had expanded to include over 100 family physicians and 20 mental health consultants in 15 different cities and towns.