'They make you doubt your sanity.' Staff describe toxic workplace at top mental health hospital
Many staff inside the country's leading mental health institution say they are suffering their own trauma from a toxic workplace rife with discrimination and bullying.
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Anonymous employee feedback from health-care providers at Toronto's Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH) include widespread staff complaints about a work culture they say left them with mental health challenges including anxiety, depression and even suicidality.
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When they attempt to address their grievances, many say they were met with retaliation and a lack of accountability.
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Some staff blamed the workplace culture at CAMH for mental health challenges. 'They make you doubt your sanity,' one respondent wrote.
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Some respondents explicitly noted a gap between the hospital's mental health mission and the psychological state of its employees.
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'It is ironic that an organization that provides mental health support is so disconnected from the mental health of its staff,' said one respondent.
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Another wrote: 'The fact that the organization puts out statements about anti-racism that don't align with what we experience internally, it's a problem. They don't walk the talk internally.'
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CAMH, hailed as a leading international mental health voice that provides training on staff mental health to major employers in Canada, said it has reviewed the criticisms by staff and taken active steps to address them.
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'I know this is what happens in workplaces — It is very different when you hear it from colleagues,' said CAMH equity director, Kwame McKenzie in an interview. 'It's very poignant. It's very raw. It makes you think of the urgency that you need to do something different.'
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The responses were gathered in 2021 and 2023 by an external consulting group and the hospital's equity office respectively, and were obtained by the Investigative Journalism Bureau through freedom of information legislation.
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The internal reviews, which unfolded during COVID and the emergence of the Black Lives Matter movement, are only the latest attempts to understand longstanding issues at CAMH.
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Following a 2019 internal survey that raised concerns of racism, hospital administrators decided additional indepth interviews were needed to better understand the experience of employees. In 2021 and 2023, a total of about 2,000 employees — nearly half the hospital's staff — took part in separate workplace reviews.
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