As Associate Director of CAMH's Cundill Centre for Child and Youth Depression, Dr. Stephanie Ameis is passionate about providing better mental health care to young people with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD).
“Many of the teens and young adults that I see struggle with depression, psychosis, suicidal thinking and problems with functioning in everyday life. Our work can increase awareness, access to treatment and improve outcomes,” she says.
Stephanie discovered her passion for child and youth psychiatry during her residency training in psychiatry at the University of Toronto.
She was struck by the opportunity to work with families (caregivers and children) to help at a critical time during development to improve long-term outcomes by making things better for kids in the moment and as they grow up.
“When you work with children, you can often make a change that can have a lifelong impact,” she says. “Roughly 75 per cent of mental health disorders onset by early adulthood and half by the teenage years, so once people grow up they may have suffered for many years and it can be more difficult to experience full recovery.”
