Season 2 Episode 7: "Closing the Global Mental Healthcare Gap" with Daisy Singla, PhD

Daisy Singla, PhD is a clinical psychologist, associate professor in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Toronto, and senior scientist with the Institute for Mental Health Policy Research at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health. She has led some of the largest clinical psychotherapy trials in the world, exploring methods for increasing access to mental health services in diverse cultures and settings around the world. She has received awards from the American Psychological Association and the Society Psychotherapy Research, and in 2018 she became the youngest ever recipient of the Pragmatic Clinical Study Award.

In this episode, Daisy talks to Bruce about her work to increase access to mental health services in low-income communities around the world, including in rural India and Uganda. She explains how the task sharing model makes it possible to leverage the expertise of mental health professionals along with motivated trainees from local communities to scale up evidence-based treatments in high need areas. She also describes the training and supervision models they employ and offers her insights on how what she’s learned through this work can be applied in North America.