Issues affecting Canadians

Online Educational Tool for Parents/Caregivers of a Youth with an Eating Disorder

Do you think your child might have an Eating Disorder?

Do you want to learn about eating disorders and how you can help your child?

Purpose of the research: To understand if the online educational tool (www.canped.ca) is helpful to parents/caregivers of a child who may have an eating disorder.

Who can participate: Parents or caregivers of a youth (9-18 years old) who may have an eating disorder.

Topics covered include:

  1. What is an eating disorder?
  2. Medical risks of eating disorders
  3. Understanding eating disorders
  4. Essential components of treating pediatric eating disorders
  5. Supporting a child with an eating disorder: Practical advice from professionals
  6. B.C. meal support video
  7. Recommended resources

Ethics: This research project has been approved by the Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario Research Ethics Board.

Contact: For more information visitwww.canped.ca, email us at canped@cheo.on.ca, or call us at (613) 737-7600 ext 3803. You may also download the Participant Recruitment Ad.

 


Managing Needle Pain in Children and Adults

Comprehensive guidelines on the mitigation of vaccine related pain in children and adults have recently been published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal with psychologists playing a key role. The Help Eliminate Pain in Kids and Adults Team has expanded their 2010 guidelines to cover the "5 P’s" of pain management: pharmacological, procedural, process, psychological, and physical. These guidelines are endorsed by 12 national organizations, including the Canadian Psychological Association. The World Health Organization has suggested that a number of the recommendations be implemented for vaccine pain management worldwide. The HELPinKids&Adults Team is led by Anna Taddio (Pharmacy, University of Toronto) and received funding from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (co-principal investigators: Taddio and C. Meghan McMurtry, Psychology, University of Guelph) to synthesize a large body of research evidence; four of the six evidence leads of the team are psychologists.

Guideline: http://www.cmaj.ca/content/early/2015/08/24/cmaj.150391.full.pdf#page=1&view=FitH

HELPinKids&Adults website: http://phm.utoronto.ca/helpinkids/

 


Healthy Living

Canada’s Integrated Healthy Living Strategy

The Integrated Pan-Canadian Healthy Living Strategy "provides a conceptual framework for sustained action based on Healthy Living. It envisions a healthy nation in which all Canadians experience the conditions that support the attainment of good health. The goals of the Strategy are to improve overall health outcomes and to reduce health disparities. Grounded in a population health approach, the initial emphasis is on healthy eating, physical activity, and their relationship to healthy weights".

For more information, see: http://www.phac-aspc.gc.ca/hl-vs-strat/index-eng.php 

Psychological Factors and Canada’s Healthy Living Strategy

 


Workplace Mental Health

CPA Letter to Employers

CPA CEO, Dr. Karen Cohen, has written a letter to major employers in Canada requesting a meeting with their leadership to discuss ways in which they can address the mental health needs of their employees to improve workplace morale and productivity. Click here to read the letter .

New CPA Section

The CPA would like to announce the formation of a new Section – Psychologists in Hospitals and Health Centers. This Section will provide a forum for psychologists who are employed, practice, teach, or conduct research in hospitals and health care settings.  Convention delegates are invited to attend the Town Hall and organizational meeting that will be held during the CPA’s 73rd Annual Convention in Halifax.

Proposal for Funding: CPA, HEAL and Dr. P. Hausdorf (CSIOP)

The CPA, on behalf of a subset of the Health Action Lobby (HEAL) member organizations and associations, and with Dr. Peter Hausdorf, Chair, Canadian Society for Industrial-Organizational Psychology (CSIOP), submitted a proposal for funding to Health Canada. The goal of this proposal was to develop a web-based survey that would allow for the assessment of the work-related health and well-being of Canada’s health professionals. CPA was recently informed that Health Canada would not be providing funding for any additional projects. The CPA is pursuing other funding options.

Mental Health of Federal Public Servants

CPA has initiated a series of meetings with the federal government about the mental health of its human resource. Recent reports in the Ottawa Citizen indicate that approximately 40% of the disability claims of federal public servants are mental health related. CPA hopes to work with communities of interest in addressing the primary, secondary and tertiary mental health needs of Canada’s workforce. CPA hopes to engage its communities of experts and be able to lend assistance in meeting these needs and in promoting the system change necessary to enhancing access to psychological services when these are needed. Contact Drs. Cohen or Service at CPA Executive Office for more information (executiveoffice@cpa.ca).

Ontario Psychological Association Early Career Psychologist Project

This document is a practical organizational guide for Psychological Associations about how to develop and maintain the membership and involvement of early career psychologists in their Association. It is a compilation of the efforts and strategies of the Early Career Psychologist Taskforce in the Ontario Psychological Association (OPA). Many of the ideas and strategies can be broadly applied and modified to meet the needs of both small and large Associations. Click here to download the guide or contact the OPA for more information.

Supply and Demand Task Force

There are a number of pressing issues which need to be addressed regarding the supply of and demand for psychologists. A large proportion of the psychology workforce is approaching retirement. Who will take their places? How many people do we need to train? How should we plan to ensure that there are enough psychologists in areas such as prevention, health promotion and rehabilitation? Will we have an adequate number of psychologists to conduct research, train future students, and develop programs? We have data about the number of students entering and graduating from psychology programs, but little about the nature of their training, and even less about their career paths after graduation. We lack information on how many psychologists are actively practicing in the jurisdiction in which they are licensed, how many are publicly versus privately funded, how many are in health versus correctional versus school, how many are full-time versus part-time, etc.

In 2008, CPA struck a task force to examine issues related to the supply of and demand for psychologists in Canada.

View the Spring 2009 issue of Psynopsis for an article on supply and demand issues and the task force.

The task force’s final report was submitted to and accepted by the CPA Board in November 2010. Click here to view the report.

G7

CPA is a member of this group of national health care associations outside of medicine and nursing organized to advocate for the needs of this important health human resource that operates both within and outside of the public health sector. The G7 recently met to establish an advocacy agenda for the group around access to service and is working collaboratively to develop common datasets among provider groups to collect information about Canada’s health human resource.