How UHN and CAMH’s new partnership is closing gaps in mental health care

Although there is a growing understanding that the brain and body are fundamentally interconnected, we often still treat physical and mental health separately. Stress, immune function, metabolism—these systems don’t work in isolation. They are in constant conversation with the brain: shaping how we feel, how we function, how we heal.

UHN and CAMH have come together to close the gaps between physical and mental health. Our goal: to better understand—and ultimately heal—the mechanisms that connect physical and mental illness.

“We still don’t fully understand how the brain works, let alone how it interacts with the rest of the body. If we want to get ahead of illness, we need to close that knowledge gap,” says Dr. Jaideep Bains, interim senior research director of UHN Research Institutes and director of the Krembil Brain Institute. “And we need to ask, and finally start to answer, some of the most critical questions in human health.”

“This high-impact collaboration is grounded in clinical excellence, research expertise, and a shared belief in what is possible when we align people and purpose,” comments UHN President and CEO Dr. Kevin Smith. “There is nowhere else with this unique combination: brain science, mental health, and biomedical excellence, elevated by national leadership, global research networks, and a commitment to transforming science into care.”

“CAMH and UHN are already working together in new ways to better serve people with complex needs,” says Sarah Downey, president and CEO of CAMH. “We’ve aligned care pathways across our hospitals, strengthened trauma-informed approaches, and are exploring shared education models that prepare the next generation of health professionals to care for the whole person. By bringing together our strengths and leadership in research, this partnership is generating new knowledge that can change how care is delivered across the health system.”

The next step is to deepen our understanding of the brain-body connection and translate that knowledge into better care. People living with conditions like schizophrenia, depression, or addiction are more likely to develop chronic health conditions—and more likely to die 15 to 20 years earlier than their peers. Meanwhile, people with heart disease, cancer, arthritis, or diabetes face significantly higher risk of developing mental illness, especially when the stress, uncertainty, or pain of illness goes untreated. Over time, these cascading effects contribute to a growing burden on the person, their family, and the healthcare system. As people live longer—but not necessarily healthier lives—the cost of treating late-stage, co-occurring illnesses rises, even as outcomes decline.

The UHN-CAMH partnership is a world-first model with transformative global potential to address this challenge.

“Our first goal is to better understand how the brain’s circuitry shapes—and is shaped by—our bodies, environments, and experiences. By asking these kinds of questions across disciplines and populations, we can begin to identify brain-body mechanisms that shape health and uncover new pathways to healing and recovery,” explains Dr. Bains.

Researchers are mapping the real-time conversation between brain and body, uncovering the connections that govern not just thoughts and behaviour, but also immune responses, disease-induced inflammation, and even the progression of diseases like cancer and diabetes.

According to Dr. Aristotle Voineskos, vice president of the UHN-CAMH Partnership and senior vice president of research and science at CAMH, joint CAMH and UHN research will focus on three key areas where the brain and body are especially connected.

“Together, UHN and CAMH are perfectly positioned to tackle questions like: Why do panic attacks cause shortness of breath? Do tumours grow faster in people with depression? Does childhood trauma negatively affect immune response in adulthood?” he says.

Another promising avenue of research, according to UHN Mental Health and UHN-CAMH Partnership program medical director and senior scientist at CAMH Dr. Ishrat Husain, is drug repurposing: using existing medications, originally designed to treat physical illness, to improve mental health outcomes. This work reflects the powerful two-way connection between brain and body and the untapped potential in therapies already available.

“We’re beginning to see how existing treatments can work in new ways. For example, GLP-1 receptor agonists, originally developed for diabetes, are now showing promise in the treatment of addictions, anti-inflammatory medications are showing antidepressant effects, and ketamine and other anesthetics are being used to relieve persistent and severe mood symptoms,” he says.

“With deeper insight into the two-way relationship between brain and body, we can develop better interventions. Through this partnership, we will accelerate discovery in brain health science to bring better care to people with both physical and mental illness.”