Dr. Kristin Cleverley has been awarded a project grant from the Canadian Institute of Health Research for her Longitudinal Youth in Transition Study. This $1 million 5-year grant aims to improve the outcomes of transitional aged youth with mental health concerns by providing front-line clinicians and decision-makers with evidence of factors that facilitate or impede mental health care transitions and on the effect of transitioning on youth and their families.
This will be accomplished by completing a 3-year longitudinal cohort study to examine continuity of care, psychiatric symptoms, functioning, and service-use of youth aged 16-18 with mental illness as they transition out of child mental health services at age 18. Participants will be recruited from child and youth mental health programs at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, The Hospital for Sick Children and 2 community mental health sites. Youth and their caregivers will inform the study design and knowledge translation methods.
The results of this research study will have important implications for youth, families and clinicians regarding identifying enablers and barriers to optimal transitions and supporting the development and evaluation of clinical interventions to enhance continuity of care.
In a related CIHR Funded Delphi study, Dr. Cleverley will engage youth and caregivers as experts to come to consensus on process and outcomes indicators that can be used to improve the quality of transitions between child and adult mental health services.
Dr. Cleverley is a Clinician-Scientist in the Margaret and Wallace McCain Centre for Child, Youth & Family Mental Health at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH) and the CAMH Chair in Mental Health Nursing Research at the Lawrence Bloomberg Faculty of Nursing at the University of Toronto.