Report Finds Canada Made ‘No Progress’ on Psychiatric Care Wait Times

This article was last updated on April 16, 2022

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A recent report on health care wait times in Canada has pointed out that the country made “no progress” on making wait times for psychiatric care public better. Wait Time Alliance (WTA) mentioned in its latest report, entitled “The Gap: Report Card on Wait Times in Canada,” that although “objective measures of access to psychiatric care exist in a few regions across Canada,” there is a lot more to be done to take that data and develop an accurate picture of how long Canadians are waiting for access to psychiatric services.

The WTA and the Canadian Psychiatric Association, representing Canada’s 4,500 psychiatrists, collaborated in 2007 to develop benchmarks for access to psychiatric care. “The 2014 WTA report highlights that, for the sixth consecutive year, provincial governments have made no progress in publicly releasing wait times for psychiatric care.” The report adds that “the CPA finds this unacceptable given the priority that has been placed on access to mental health services.”

In addition to that, the report stresses that a clear picture of how long Canadians are waiting for psychiatric care “would facilitate a ‘race to the top,’” adding that “where jurisdictions could learn from one another and measure their success through a framework of directly comparable measurements.” The report admits that though health care is a provincial responsibility, the federal government could help in this area by working with the Mental Health Commission of Canada and the Canadian Institute of Health Information “to develop a common approach to measuring access to psychiatric care.”