By scaling existing models for integrated mental health care, Canada can improve patient outcomes while driving economic growth
When Prime Minister Mark Carney pitched Canada as a great place to invest at the recent Canada Investment Summit, he overlooked what could become one of our strongest assets: a healthy, productive population supported by a healthcare system equipped for today’s challenges.
But that pitch is difficult to make when the healthcare system is missing a critical ingredient: a national primary care plan that integrates mental health care into the publicly funded system.
Without it, Canadians lack timely and affordable access to appropriate treatment – compromising their well-being and weakening our economy.
The good news is we do not need to reinvent the wheel to build a plan. There are already practical, scalable models we can use to expand access to mental health care while maximizing the return on public investment.
Roughly one in five Canadians live with mental illness. About two in five cannot access the care they need, forcing them to rely on a patchwork system that often lacks adequate training and resources.
This puts severe strain on primary care and emergency department services and costs the Canadian economy an estimated $50 billion a year in lost productivity and absenteeism.
In contrast, countries with universally accessible mental health care – including the United Kingdom, Norway and Australia – provide patients with timely access to effective, evidence-based treatments that improve outcomes and strengthen the economy.
The UK, which gives patients direct access to psychologists through their primary care networks, has reduced wait times for treatment to less than eight weeks.
Its integrated mental health services treat more than three-quarters of a million people annually and over half of them recover in fewer than 10 treatment sessions.
Emergency department visits and hospitalizations have declined and there has been a direct and positive impact on patient income, disability claims and GDP nationally.
A similar program in Norway has equally impressive results. Data published in 2025 showed that when governments invest in access to timely, effective mental health services, the return on investment was 370 per cent across the next five years.
Numerous studies – including from Canada – show that integrating psychologists into primary care significantly reduces treatment wait times and results in up to 90 per cent of patients completing treatment – a much better result than with traditional referral systems.
It also improves outcomes for depression and anxiety, reduces physician burnout and is linked to lower rates of diabetes, heart disease and obesity – chronic diseases that mental distress exacerbates.
Integration also reduces healthcare costs, generating an estimated $2 in savings for every $1 invested in publicly funded psychology services.
How do we build an integrated system in Canada?
First, we need a national primary care strategy so that all federal, provincial and territorial governments are on the same page and not running their own separate experiments when it comes to mental health services.
Second, we should learn from models already in place abroad and here at home.
For instance, Ontario’s Structured Psychotherapies program provides free, publicly funded cognitive-behavioural therapy and related services for people with symptoms of depression or an anxiety-related disorder.
While a comprehensive evaluation of the program is underway, an initial review found that family health teams with integrated psychologists were better able to meet their patient’s mental health needs, resulting in fewer emergency department visits.
The University of British Columbia’s walk-in, short-term therapy clinic at its Okanagan campus is another model that could be scaled for the rest of Canada.
There, a registered clinical psychologist works alongside the medical team at the Student Health Clinic one day a week to identify and treat mental health concerns – giving students immediate access to evidence-based treatment.
Next, the plan must include strategies for building workforce capacity and remunerating mental and behavioural health specialists.
Governments should partner with post-secondary institutions that have clinical psychology doctoral programs that are accredited with primary care clinics throughout the province.
This would give patients multiple access points, create a pipeline for the next generation of specialists and provide structure for universal training and oversight for mental health providers within the public sector.
Governments must also invest in data measurement and monitoring – including electronic health records and survey and administrative data – to evaluate outcomes, target investment for maximum impact and measure system-wide performance.
The return on integrating mental health into primary care in the right way is well established. By building on models that already exist, we can improve outcomes, strengthen the workforce and boost productivity.
Not only is it the right thing to do, it also makes economic sense.
Photo courtesy of © European Union, European Parliament <https://www.europarl.europa.eu/legal-notice/>, via Wikimedia Commons
