The largest known donation of its kind in southwestern Ontario was announced Thursday with a goal to reshape mental health care access.
St. Joseph’s Health Care London announced Thursday that Ryan Finch had donated $5 million to fund research into new solutions to make it easier for patients to access mental health care.
“Every moment when someone is hurting is a moment to be supportive,” said Finch, president of Finch Auto Group.
Finch added that while he and his family have always made an effort to give back to the community, he felt the time was right to do something “a little more transformational.”
St. Joseph’s said the funds will support a new research chair in mental health system transformation, a first in Canada. The chair will aim to develop collaborative initiatives that help create changes in the mental health system.
“This funding is about fundamentally rebooting the mental health care system,” said Jodi Younger, St. Joseph’s vice president of patient care and quality.
“It’s long been a complicated and complex system to navigate, especially for individuals diagnosed with a mental illness. More than 50 per cent of people have their first mental health encounter in the emergency room because they don’t know where to go.”
The funds will also be used to support special initiatives aimed at improving the mental health system, along with expanding St. Joseph’s research project Mental Health Incubator for Disruptive Solutions (MINDS 2.0).
Dr. Viraj Mehta, site chief of St. Joesph’s mental health care program, said his initial reaction to the news of the donation was a feeling of “optimism.”
“It is quite hard to truly describe how positive this feeling actually produces for me,” said Mehta, adding that he was not sure an opportunity of this kind would ever be served in the London region.
Mehta said the funds would be used at a macro level to help change and reshape the system and how mental health care is provided.
“It is very complicated. It’s challenging to access mental health care. People struggle with understanding what mental illness really is like,” Mehta said.
That, Mehta said, explains why change is needed: “To improve the ability for us as an organization and as physicians to deliver the care we want to deliver, but more importantly, for people who need access to the care to be able to access it is more easily.”
As part of the donation, the building where mental health care is provided has been renamed “The Finch Family Mental Health Care Building.” Officials with St. Joseph’s say having an actual name at the forefront of mental health care helps to lift it out of the shadows and onto the same level as other health care.
“For us as an organization, this isn’t just about recognizing someone,” Mehta said. “Having a very prominent name acknowledging the need for mental health to be treated as important … that is what this does for us.”
For his part, Finch said a major impetus of the donation was to help break down the stigma around mental health.
“Mental health should be seen like any other physical ailment and for some reason, it still isn’t,” Finch said.
“This is going to help support people in need and help develop tools for research that can be used in the community.”
The Finch Family Mental Health Care Building has 156 inpatient beds with care for those with severe and persistent mental illness. Staff at St. Joseph’s performs more than 150,000 outpatient and outreach visits annually.
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