about us
Led by Dr. Jai Shah, our research group has been at the forefront of intersecting questions about research, clinical care, and service transformation in early intervention and youth mental health for the past decade and more. Â
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We use a range of approaches to understand the risk, onset, and course leading up to severe mental illness, the role and potential benefits of early intervention paradigms, and to shape the development and evaluation of next-generation clinical staging frameworks and the corresponding ‘steps’ of care – all with translational impact on policy and practice. Â
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Although we study individuals and relationships in some of our work, we ultimately see mental health services and health systems themselves as the subject of research. We benefit from designing, operationalizing, and having access to state-of-the-art platforms in which research is integrated into best-practice clinical settings to shed light on the profiles, risk factors, and care trajectories that characterize pathways to a severe illness. Â
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To achieve this, we partner and collaborate with a range of stakeholders including youth and their family members, individuals with lived experience of mental health problems and social adversity, along with Indigenous communities and representatives.
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Our lab is based at the Douglas Research Centre, in Montreal, Québec, Canada and is affiliated with McGill University.Â
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our approach
We believe in collaboration - locally, nationally and globally - across research and knowledge translation networks. We partner with likeminded scientists, clinicians, policy makers and young people and families in many of our projects.
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We feel strongly that the growth and maturation of a field can be best achieved not just by generating and translating new knowledge, but also identifying blind spots and turning a critical lens onto that same work.
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We are convinced that teams are better and richer when made up of a membership that is diverse: diverse in the multidimensional identities of individuals, their quirks and experiences, and the sources of their experiences.
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We stubbornly think that the world will be a better and more interesting place when we question our assumptions, tolerate the discomfort that comes with this, and commit to working together, including (and especially) alongside those with whom we have little in common.
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We find it most intriguing to work where the background, passions and experiences of different people converge. That includes psychiatry, psychology, the human sciences, urban planning, epidemiology and public health, global health, and beyond. Our interest is in learning new tools but also using whichever ones best suit the problem, rather than becoming a hammer that treats everything like a nail.
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We care about training and mentorship, which should be bidirectional across hierarchies and the research-clinical divide. We want to engage with folks from all walks of life, including those from marginalized and underrepresented communities and those with lived/living experience of mental ill health. We are happy to meet and chat with undergraduate and graduate students, all the way to medical residents, postdoctoral fellows, and younger scientists, so get in touch! Â
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We are committed to considering the downstream implications of our work, and the field as a whole. Mental health and psychiatry have a dark history, and being mindful of this is critical to steering towards a better future.
