Headquarters
The Royal’s Institute of Mental Health, Ottawa, Ontario
Executive Director
Shauna MacEachern
Board chair
Jessica Hill
Youth in Canada and around the world face unprecedented mental health and addiction challenges. Up to one in five young Canadians is estimated to have a diagnosable mental illness, yet services and care tend to be fragmented and under-resourced. Timely interventions to treat youth mental health, substance use, and addiction (YMH) disorders can prevent them from turning into persistent adult disorders and reduce future impacts on health care, productivity and stability. New knowledge generated by sound research should be informing decision-making at the case, program and system levels, however it is typically not mobilized to impact policy and practice in efficient and scalable ways.
Frayme addresses urgent priorities in YMH service delivery and international knowledge sharing by gathering and synthesizing evidence, identifying research gaps and facilitating the sharing of evidence. Integrated Youth Services (IYS) provide a combination of services that holistically address the needs of young people through multi-disciplinary collaboration across providers, services and sectors that are easily accessible with pathways to more specialized care where appropriate. Frayme is contributing to a world in which all youth, young adults, and their families have access to the help they need to be well, when they need it, in the context in which they live. IYS models are emerging as the preferred evidence-informed and cost-effective way to treat YMH disorders. With over 265 individual and organizational partners across Canada and in ten other countries, Frayme focuses on deepening understanding and sharing of evidence about IYS models, identifying its core components, including youth and family engagement, stepped-care pathways, and IYS settings; and using implementation science to make the best use of what we know works in IYS to inform practice and policy changes that improve mental health services for youth and young adults.
* (formerly known as Healthy Young People Everywhere)