Child & Adolescent Psychiatry

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.