Psychotherapy Providers and the International Experience

Dear Editor: We substantially agree with the authors of the letter “Making evidence-based psychological care accessible to Canadians” ¹ submitted in response to our previous publication regarding funding of psychotherapies; our health care funding model has yet to properly embrace the multidisciplinary nature of comprehensive care, especially in the community. Indeed, the examples we cited from other countries have broadened public funding beyond physicians. No one discipline—neither psychiatrists nor psychologists—should be the exclusive publicly funded provider of psychotherapy services, and the Improving Access to Psychological Therapies (IAPT) is an excellent example of this; we need to innovate with new service delivery models and technologies and a breadth of trained and qualified providers, while adhering to standards of evidence-based interventions, outcome measurement, and public accountability.

David Gratzer, MD The Scarborough Hospital Toronto, Ontario Department of Psychiatry, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario David Goldbloom, MD Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, Toronto, Ontario Department of Psychiatry, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario