Strategic Plan 2013-2017

Chief's message

Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre has long been known as the destination for the best health care in Canada, as well as a hospital where the future of global health care is being invented. Our Sunnybrook Department of Psychiatry is proud to be at the forefront of discovery in the related fields of mental health and brain medicine. Disorders of the brain and the mind represent some of the biggest health challenges now and for the coming generation. Our Department of Psychiatry is firmly embedded in the Sunnybrook Brain Sciences Program, and we are driven by the understanding that major mental disorders are rooted in abnormalities of brain function and that all brain disorders have significant psychological, behavioural and social consequences. Because the brain and mind cannot be separated, a comprehensive, integrated and multidisciplinary approach to understand and manage these disorders is required. Our Department is now poised to face down the daunting challenge of disorders of the brain and mind through our bold five-year strategic plan.

The central goal of this strategic plan is to lay the foundation for renewal so that we can continue to grow and differentiate ourselves from our peers. It is only through differentiating ourselves from other Toronto Academic Health Science Network hospitals in distinctive ways that we will be able to attract funding, faculty and learners. Of note, we do this in collaboration with the University of Toronto’s department of psychiatry, with which we share a close partnership. A central aspect of our strategic plan is that our Department’s mission is to integrate brain, mind and body into our research, education and clinical care. Within this brain-mind-body continuum, we will deliberately focus our resources on complex mood and anxiety disorders across the lifespan, as well as on neurodegenerative disorders.

In this strategic plan we give you a glimpse of our three strategic directions corresponding to clinical care, education and research. We define the metrics that we will track to define success and we lay out our implementation strategy, as well as our first-year milestones.

We hope you enjoy reading our Department of Psychiatry strategic plan and encourage you to collaborate with us to help us achieve our goals.

Dr. Ari Zaretsky
Chief, Department of Psychiatry
Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre
Associate Professor, Department of Psychiatry
University of Toronto