Ontario Shores Honours Mental Health Week

As we honour Mental Health Week and recognize our staff and volunteers' extraordinary efforts and dedication to our patients and their families, we acknowledge that the demand for mental health services has never been higher.

Ontario Shores has identified a significant need for psychiatric emergency services in Durham Region as part of its larger redevelopment plan. Ontario Shores has submitted a funding request to the provincial government to construct an emergency department using the Emergency Psychiatric Assessment Treatment and Healing (EmPATH) model of care, founded by Dr Scott Zeller. 

We are pleased to announce that EmPATH founder, a renowned leader in the emergency psychiatry field, and an esteemed international expert from the United States, Dr. Scott Zeller will be joining us as a keynote for this event, interviewing Dr. Zeller is Carly Weeks, an award-winning national health reporter and columnist at The Globe and Mail.  

Please join us to learn more about our work, and gain valuable insights into this ground-breaking model from one of its foremost experts with this unique opportunity.

To learn more about Ontario Shore’s Master Plan, visit here.
All are welcome, please RSVP at @email

Biographies 

Dr. Scott Zeller 

Scott Zeller, MD, is Vituity’s Vice President for Acute Psychiatry. He previously served as Chief of Psychiatric Emergency Services at the Alameda Health System in Oakland, California. In his 30 years of practice, he has personally cared for over 80,000 patients.

Dr. Zeller is known around the world as a leading expert in psychiatric emergencies. Dr. Zeller created the EmPATH model for crisis stabilization. These dedicated units are trauma-informed environments where acute mental health crisis patients receive monitoring and support. Initially published as the Alameda Model, Dr. Zeller has consulted on or led the creation of over 15 EmPATH units across the United States.

He has authored multiple textbooks, numerous peer-reviewed articles, book chapters, and lectures internationally as a keynote speaker. Additionally, he led the development of both U.S. and international guidelines on the evaluation and treatment of agitation. He has published research on innovative designs for emergency mental healthcare, which he has also helped to implement in multiple centers.

Dr. Zeller graduated from Northwestern University Medical School and completed his University of California, San Francisco residency. In addition to his work with Vituity, Dr. Zeller is an Assistant Clinical Professor at both the University of California, Riverside, and Touro University medical schools and is a past president of the American Association for Emergency Psychiatry. In 2015, the National Council on Behavioral Health named him USA Doctor of the Year. He was also awarded the 2019 Ritz E. Heerman Memorial Award from the California Hospital Association. To ensure that behavioral health patients receive timely and compassionate care.
 

Carly Weeks 

Carly Weeks has established a reputation as a fearless journalist with a passion for shining a spotlight on the health and health-care-related topics that matter to Canadians, including the significant impact of COVID-19 on all of us. We all have a vested interest in health care. And in a world where we are increasingly surrounded by myths, misinformation, and lies that threaten to keep us misinformed and in the dark, Weeks specializes in finding the hidden stories that some organizations would rather not be told. She provides a healthy dose of reality in her writing and debunks myths on topics ranging from the prescription painkiller crisis to fears of over-vaccination to Big Food and nutrition policy to name just a few. She has also written about her personal experiences with extreme bullying as a child and has become a source of information and inspiration for families dealing with this serious issue.