About the Department
The Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry is a relatively new department within Hamilton Health Sciences and is part of McMaster Children’s Hospital. The creation of the department followed a considerable expansion of the services available for child and youth mental health within the Hamilton area. Prior to 2008, the only child and youth mental health services available in our community were primarily outpatient services. Since that time there has been tremendous expansion of the child and youth mental health services at HHS.
Currently the Child and Youth Mental Health Program (CYMHP) at McMaster Children’s Hospital (MCH) provides care for children 0-17 years old. We are now one of the largest child and adolescent psychiatry programs in Ontario and Canada. CYMHP is a major provider of child and youth mental health service locally and regionally and serves patients from Local Health Integration Network (LHIN) 3 (Waterloo Wellington), LHIN 4 (Hamilton Niagara Haldimand Brant) and LHIN 6 Halton Health Services (Oakville, Milton, Georgetown). We have a comprehensive range of services including:
- A 22-bed inpatient unit
- A day hospital program
- An outpatient service for Hamilton
- A regional/outreach outpatient service for other regions described above
- An emergency service through McMaster Children’s Hospital emergency room
Currently we have 15 child psychiatrists and over 150 allied health staff including psychologists, social workers, nursing, child and youth workers.
Visit our McMaster University Department page.
About the Chief – Dr. Ellen Lipman
Dr. Ellen Lipman is a child psychiatrist and professor in the Division of Child Psychiatry, Department of Psychiatry and Behavioural Neurosciences, Faculty of Health Sciences, McMaster University. She is currently Chief of the Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at McMaster Children’s Hospital. She is also Head of the Academic Division of Child Psychiatry in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioural Neurosciences and Director of the Offord Centre for Child Studies. Her clinical work includes consultation to outpatient services at the Child and Youth Mental Health Program, McMaster Children’s Hospital. Dr. Lipman’s main research interests are in the areas of single-parent families, teen mothers, disadvantaged children, group therapies, effectiveness studies, child and adolescent psychiatry, and epidemiology.
Chief Assistant
Laura Kennedy
Kennel14@mcmaster.ca, 905-521-2100 ext. 21484
Physicians
Olabode Akintan
Teresa Bennett
Khrista Boylan
Priyanka Comfort
Jennifer Couturier
Alex Drossos
Sheila Harms
Ellen Lipman
Christina McDonald
Soh-yoon Min
Tatjana Muhamedagic
Laura Rosato
Roberto Sassi
Michelle Venantius
Evan Weizenberg