Toronto's CAMH receives $15 million donation

Toronto's CAMH receives $15 million donation A $15 million donation promises to enhance ground-breaking work being done at Toronto’s Centre for Addiction and Mental Health.

TORONTO — A $15 million donation promises to enhance ground-breaking work being done at Toronto’s Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH).

The donation was made by the Garron Family this week.

“We are extremely grateful to count the Garron Family among our growing community of mental health champions. Gifts like this will support targeted research that will enhance our understanding of the brain chemistry underlying mental illness,” Dr. Catherine Zahn, CAMH president and CEO, said.

The money will go towards imaging labs at the centre, one of the few in the world with state of the art equipment, such as MRIs and positron emission tomography (PET) scanners, dedicated specifically to brain and mental health research.

“Our family is proud to invest in brain imaging at CAMH,” Myron Garron said. “The human brain is the final frontier, and imaging will help us get more people the right diagnosis and treatment so they can recover from mental illness.”

In honour of the Garron family’s donation, CAMH is naming a medical imaging suite at the facilities the “Garron Family PET Imaging Suite” and the Intergenerational Wellness Building located at 80 Workman Way will be renamed the “Garron Family Building”.

Dr. Neil Vasdev, Director of CAMH’s Brain Imaging Centre, said the centre has been around for some 30 years, during which it has made some tremendous progress in areas, such as finding links between inflammation and depression.

“It really has affected all facets of mental health including Alzheimer’s disease, schizophrenia, autism spectrum disorder, addictions and traumatic brain injuries as well as many other mental health consequences,” Vasdev said.