Evaluation

Would you agree to chemotherapy treatment if there was no evidence to support its effectiveness in treating cancer?

Every day, we benefit from medical advances that are rooted in decades of rigorous research and evaluation to improve our physical health. Unfortunately, our mental health has not received the same attention.

Until now, Canada has lacked a large-scale, coordinated effort to collect evidence on the effectiveness of different treatment approaches to improve mental health and substance use services.

HRI is changing this.

The evaluation of mental health and substance use services is a vital step toward better care. Until we start measuring outcomes, we have no basis for determining how to use limited resources to provide as much benefit as possible for as many people as possible. We cannot afford to waste scarce resources, particularly when the demand for treatment is so great.

Dr. Jean Costello, Director of Evaluation, leads HRI’s evaluation program and is guiding the growth and expansion of the Recovery Journey Project, a flagship model for measuring treatment outcomes. HRI has also engaged Dr. Brian Rush, a leading international expert in evaluation and Scientist Emeritus with the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, whose expertise has been invaluable to the development of the Recovery Journey Project.

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Learn more about why Canada needs evaluation research and how HRI is helping to improve care:

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Research in Progress