by Gillian Rutherford,University of Alberta

Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain

Each year, 1 in 5 Canadians will experience a mental health issue, and about50%will have experienced a mental Illness by age 40. For many, their first and sometimes only point of contact for medical assistance is their family doctor. Now, University of Alberta psychiatrists are offering training, resources and ongoing support so family doctors in Alberta can deliver more timely and effective mental health care, especially to rural and Indigenous patients.

The new Alberta Network for Community Health Outreach and Rural Mental Health is a 12-week training program for family doctors that includes interactive educational sessions, collaborative case conferences and ongoing support with tools and access to experts. It is led by David Ross, chair of psychiatry, and Jeremy Weleff.

"The vast majority of individuals with psychiatric illness are going to be seen in primary care before they ever get to a psychiatrist, if they ever get to the psychiatrist," Ross points out. "We don't have nearly enough psychiatrists, and this problem is especially true for rural populations and in other underserved communities."

The goal of the new program is to mitigate this shortage by allowing psychiatrists to collaborate with family doctors, who may each have a caseload of several thousand people.

"Family physicians are working incredibly hard," says Ross, who is supported by the Alberta Health Services Chair in Mental Health Research. "They're being asked to treat patients who are very sick—individuals who need to see a specialist, but that may not be possible. So how can we help them cope as best as possible within the system we have?"

Practical learning, hands-on support

Each week the doctors in the program attend a two-hour session. The first hour emphasizes experiential learning through case-based scenarios, including treatment guidelines, scientific content and videos. Topics range from how to navigate psychiatric illness during pregnancy to understanding and managing the biological consequences of complex trauma to new genetic testing available to diagnose autism.

During the second hour, the doctors bring cases from their practices to a collaborative discussion with psychiatrists who can help understand the complexity of the patient's situation, guide treatment decisions, and suggest additional resources. Once the course is finished, the doctors are invited to stay connected to the program through an ongoing "community of practice"—a Discord group where they can bring questions, discuss challenges and offer suggestions to colleagues.

Sonya Regehr, a Calgary-based family doctor with the Alberta Indigenous Virtual Care Clinic, is one of the 80 physicians who have taken the program so far.

She appreciated the refresher on diagnosis and treatment of illnesses such as generalized anxiety disorder and major depressive disorder, which she often sees in her practice. What really surprised her was the integration of new science around neuroscientific findings, including biomarkers, genetic testing and functional MRI.

"I think it results in empathy, because I now have a better understanding of what's going on for patients at the neuronal level," she says. "I actually can see in my mind the image of the neurocircuitry of a person with borderline personality disorder or post-traumatic stress disorder, for example, just like I can imagine the atherosclerotic arteries in someone with high blood pressure.

"It's not a matter of just saying, 'Snap out of it, behave reasonably.' There's totally different firing going on in their neural circuits," Regehr says. "This course set me up to do better diagnosis and treatment."

Avery Wynick was part of the original cohort and is now helping to facilitate the course. A clinical lecturer in family medicine and family practitioner with a specialty in 2SLGBTQ+ care, she has used her newfound knowledge and turned to her community of practice for help with several patients.

In one case, she wanted to be sure a patient who was planning to get pregnant could do so safely while taking certain psychiatric medications. For another, she realized, thanks to her new training, that electroconvulsive therapy might be the best option for a patient who had tried numerous medications for depression without success.

"I now have access to a lovely group of psychiatrists and other family physicians, so I just sent a message and within half an hour I had an answer and knew exactly where I could refer my patient," she says. "It's great to feel so supported in providing good patient care."

Wynick says going through the course and being able to tap into that community of other doctors has helped to overcome a feeling of helplessness she sometimes felt on behalf of her patients when she didn't know where to refer them or knew there would be a years-long wait for specialist care.

Tracking results, overcoming stigma

The psychiatry team is tracking feedback from the doctors who have taken the course and is regularly updating the curriculum, with plans to offer the program to 80 more family physicians from across the province this year. They are also partnering to bring the program to specific communities in central and northern Alberta.

Inearly resultsposted to themedRxivpreprint server, participants report increased confidence in screening for, diagnosing and managing psychiatric issues; increased comfort discussing mental health concerns with patients and families; and reduced stigma towards certain psychiatric conditions.

The team is working to develop tools to assess clinical outcomes for the family doctors' patients.

"Did it decrease the number of folks they had to send to psychiatry? Did it decrease the number of people who went to the emergency room?" Ross outlines. "If we can help these family doctors manage more folks appropriately, that decreases pressure and has a massive impact on the whole system."

For Ross, one major goal is to overcome the harmful stigma towards people with mental illness.

"People with psychiatric illness die 20 years sooner than people without mental illness. This is simply unacceptable. How are we tolerating this as a society?" he asks. "Our program is not going to eliminate mental illness, but we can at least help eliminate the gaps in care."

Publication details Jeremy Weleff et al, The Alberta Network for Community Health Outreach and Rural Mental Health (ANCHOR-MH): A pilot study of a collaborative educational initiative to improve psychiatric outcomes in primary care, medRxiv (2026). DOI: 10.64898/2026.01.08.25342158 Journal information: medRxiv