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Ottawa’s mental health centre is asking people to donate a total of $75 million for urgent care and research into topics such as brain imaging and looking for physical signs of suicide risk.
The Royal launched its “Lives Reclaimed” fundraising campaign Tuesday.
As the name suggests, the goal is to “help more people reclaim their lives from mental illness and addiction,” according to a news release.
It gave examples of donations going toward research into biomarkers — “any cellular, molecular, chemical or physical change that can be measured and used to study a normal or abnormal process in the body,” according to the Canadian Cancer Society — and how they may relate to someone’s risk of suicide.
The centre also wants to study how brain scans can personalize someone’s treatment.
The campaign will also help pay for The Royal’s new urgent care clinic offering specialized support for people in crisis.
The Royal, Ottawa’s mental health centre, is preparing to open a new urgent care clinic with the aim of caring for patients in crisis so they don’t need to go to the emergency room. CBC’s Cameron Mahler took a tour of the facility.
The Waverley House Foundation supporting mental health research, whose founder Bruce McKean is a retired diplomat and early Shopify supporter, has already donated $14 million toward the fundraising, the centre also announced on Tuesday.
If the campaign reaches 15,000 donations, matching the number of people The Royal treats each year on average, the foundation will give another million dollars, according to the news release.
Among the campaign’s “community cabinet” of volunteers is Hockey Hall of Famer Daniel Alfredsson and former governor general David Johnston.
The hospital did not share a timeline for reaching its goal.
‘ The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties ’
‘ Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.cbc.ca ’
