Interested in eMentalHealth.ca for your Community?

View our new Introduction to eMentalHealth Video (2-min)

eMentalHealth.ca is a non-profit initiative. In partnership with Children's Mental Health Ontario, and the Provincial Centre of Excellence for Child and Youth Mental Health we are offering a local eMentalHealth.ca directory to communities across Canada.

Our eMentalHealth resource directory tool makes it easy for a community to set up their own local mental health portal, which includes a mental health resource directory (for all ages), mental health events calendar and news.

Note that although our initiative is originally from the Child and Youth Mental Health Sector, we do in fact provide information for all ages. We are looking for partners to manage their community directory for 1) child, youth and family mental health services, and 2) adult mental health services. Depending on the community, sometimes it is the same agency that is the expert in 1) child and youth as well as 2) adult resources. In other cases, we need multiple partners.

For counties/districts in Ontario, we are even able to offer a subsidy for setting up your local mental health resource directory. In Ontario, priority will be given to agencies which are members of Children's Mental Health Ontario and which are accredited Children's Mental Health Agencies.

Local, community partners to date include:

• Ontario
  • Ottawa (Crossroads Children's Centre)
  • Stormont Dundas Glengarry (Child/Youth Counselling Services, Cornwall Community Hospital)
  • Toronto (Hincks-Dellcrest Centre, partnership under development)
  • Renfrew County (Phoenix Centre for Children and Families)
  • Lanark County (Open Doors)
  • Simcoe County (New Path)
    
    
• British Columbia
  • Kelty Centre (partnership under development)

Role of a Local Lead Agency

As a lead agency or local partner, you will be given the right and responsibility to administer your own eMentalHealth.ca satellite site. You will have the ability to enter and edit resource listings for your local database. Database maintenance is actually quite simple due to the power of 'distributed content management'. While web visitors are viewing resources on the site, they are free to submit any suggestions to existing resources, or suggestions about new ones. Our user-friendly administrator interface makes it easy for administrators to rapidly approve, edit or reject those suggestions.

Benefits to your organization include being a lead in helping your community by making it easier for people to find the help they need. And of course, an enhanced community profile for your organization...

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

My community already has a great local, regional and provincial level Information and Referral Service service. Definitely, if your community is happy with the database(s) that you have, eMentalHealth.ca can simply provide a weblink to your community's resource directory website, and thereby help to raise web traffic to your website.

However, as we move forward, we are finding that even in communities with existing Information and Referral Services (such as 211, Mental Health Service Information Ontario, or local community information centres), there is still a role for for specialized databases such as eMentalHealth.ca. By focusing on just mental health resources, mental health events and mental health information, eMentalHealth.ca fills a niche and thereby complements other Information and Referral Services. Our comprehensive database is able to focus on resources for all ages, as well as publicly and non-publicly funded services. Furthermore, our technology allows for decentralized database administration by the local community, which empowers local communities.

In fact, initial feedback shows that many of our most frequent users are intake workers from various community agencies as well as Information & Referral specialists.

Our community can't afford an Information and Referral Service. Will we be able to afford eMentalHealth.ca? We are offering local eMentalHealth.ca resource directories free. Unlike costly proprietary or commercial database systems, eMentalhealth.ca has its own custom-designed, open source resource directory system. Since it belongs to no company, it allows us to set up additional sites without paying for expensive site licenses.

Naturally, eMentalHealth is not "free" to operate, because there are web development, hosting and other costs, but we are actively engaged in partnering with third party funders, which means our goal is to be able to offer eMentalHealth.ca to any of the 55 counties/districts in Ontario at no cost to the community.

Communities and community agencies actually save money by using our system. Not only is our system free to use, but community agencies using our system report that they save time, and as it is said, "time equals money". How is this? By using eMentalHealth.ca's database rather than having to manage a cumbersome paper/electronic database, or searching several databases to find mental health information. Also, community based workers are able to direct clients and other professionals to the website. And the task of database maintenance is further made even easier as the system allows website visitors to make suggestions about resources, events and updates.

Download Information

Description of eMentalHealth.ca for mental health service providers that would be interested in having eMentalhealth.ca for their community (English PDF / Word , Français PDF / Word )

Powerpoint Presentation for Potential Partners (English PDF / Powerpoint )

Introduction to eMentalHealth Video

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