Founded in 1979, Institute for Advancements in Mental Health (IAM) aims to support people living with mental illness and create innovative solutions for mental health. Formerly known as Schizophrenia Society of Ontario (SSO), the charity rebranded to support anyone in society impacted by mental health issues. Institute for Advancements in Mental Health funds in-house patient services, resources, and research projects to improve mental health. It states that it helped more than 5,000 people through community programs, services, and events in F2019. IAM’s main office is in Toronto.

Institute for Advancements in Mental Health offers various programs to support patients and train caregivers. IAM offers Ask the Expert, a service that assists people living with schizophrenia online, over the phone, or in person. It states that nearly 2,000 people used the service in F2019. The charity also runs a Cognitive Behavioural Therapy for Psychosis (CBT-p) program to help reduce symptoms of schizophrenia and other conditions. The program includes not only individual therapy, but also workshops for caregivers and family members to increase their ability to support loved ones. IAM reports that it has now helped train around 120 caregivers and 40 professional staff in CBT.

IAM states that it operates Canada’s first independent mental health Innovation Platform. The platform brings together innovators and people living with mental illness to build new services and solutions to mental health challenges. IAM states that it works with 150 mental health partners and innovators through the program. In a collaboration with Toronto’s Museum of Contemporary Art, IAM helped develop a light therapy room in F2019 to test whether brighter public spaces can improve mental wellness.

To develop innovative solutions, IAM also partners with individual researchers to discover new findings on mental illness. Since founding, the charity states that it has contributed over $1m to more than 20 research projects. In F2019, it launched a new Mental Health Innovation Prize, offering two research prizes valued at $50k each.

IAM runs advocacy programs to push for mental health policy reform. It advocates for more mental health services, research funding, and caregiver support. In F2019, IAM reports that it held 42 advocacy meetings with government officials. Through local and national media stories, IAM states that it reached around 16.7 million people.

Institute for Advancements in Mental Health is a medium-sized charity with $1.6m in donations and special events revenue in F2019. It received $712k in government funding, representing 29% of total revenues. Administrative costs are 20% of revenues (less investment income) and fundraising costs are 26% of donations and special events revenue. This results in total overhead spending of 45%. For every dollar donated to the charity, 55 cents go to the cause. This falls outside of Ci’s reasonable range for overhead spending, which has been the case for the past three years.

IAM has $988k in total funding reserves. Using its existing reserves, the charity can cover 70% or between eight and nine months of annual program costs.

In F2019, IAM paid external fundraisers $9k to raise $45k, for a cost of $0.20 per dollar raised.

This charity report is an update that has been sent to Institute for Advancements in Mental Health for review. Changes and edits may be forthcoming.

Updated on July 21, 2020 by Eric Zhao.