Setting the standard: Canada's first perinatal mental health guidelines

In an effort to enhance maternal mental health support across Canada, the Canadian Network for Mood and Anxiety Treatments (CANMAT) 2025 Clinical Practice Guideline for the Management of Perinatal Mood, Anxiety and Related Disorders was introduced to standardize care for perinatal and postpartum populations. Co-led by Dr. Simone Vigod, head of the Department of Psychiatry at WCH, and Benicio Frey, professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioural Neurosciences at McMaster University, these guidelines are the first of their kind in Canada, focusing on mood, anxiety and related disorders during pregnancy and postpartum.

Until now, healthcare providers were left without clear, evidence-based guidance on how to diagnose and treat mental health conditions during and after pregnancy. The CANMAT guidelines fill that gap with comprehensive, practical tools designed for real-world clinical settings.

“We’ve provided a roadmap for common conditions and outlined effective treatments,” explains Dr. Vigod. “These guidelines go beyond the traditional focus on depression to include a range of perinatal mental health disorders, offering an all-encompassing approach for clinicians working with expectant and new parents, including what kinds of treatments to prescribe and to whom.”

Developed through rigorous consultation with mental health professionals, frontline clinicians and individuals with lived experience, the guidelines represent a collaborative, community-informed approach.

“While most guidelines focus on specific provider groups like nurses or obstetricians, these best practices bring everything together in a comprehensive and detailed way,” explains Dr. Vigod. “Helping clinicians better understand the type of care to deliver and giving institutions and policymakers a benchmark for measuring care and outcomes.”

The impact was immediate: within the first week of its release, the guidelines were downloaded more than 700 times – a strong signal of both the demand and the appetite for change across disciplines.

Early reactions from healthcare professionals have been overwhelmingly positive:

"This is a huge milestone for perinatal mental health in Canada!" says a perinatal mental health expert.

"Long overdue and absolutely essential," says a pharmacist.

"This publication will be my go-to paper. It provides an amazing overview," adds a professor.

Accompanying the guidelines is a companion piece, Seeds of Hope: A Patient and Family Guide. Designed to support parents and caregivers with accessible, jargon-free information, the guide empowers individuals to understand and seek care for perinatal mental health issues. It was downloaded over 1,200 times in its first week alone.

“The guidelines have helped unite the community across the country, and now the focus is on using them as a standard for care,” describes Dr. Vigod. “This is only the beginning.”

Postpartum Matters

For more than a decade, Women’s College Hospital’s Reproductive Life Stages (RLS) Program has offered virtual support through its Mother Matters initiative – an innovative online group therapy program that has provided hundreds of new mothers with a confidential place to share their experiences and challenges navigating early parenthood. Now, that program is evolving.

Rebranded as Postpartum Matters, the updated initiative reflects the changing realities of modern parenthood. With a new user-friendly platform and expanded content, the program will continue to deliver free, therapist-moderated support – but with greater accessibility and inclusivity at its core.

A notable feature of the new Postpartum Matters program is the addition of subgroups that are tailored to meet the needs of specific communities like young parents and Black parents. Many parents in these groups face unique challenges and, by offering a space to connect with others who share similar experiences, the program creates a sense of community and support that can be crucial during the often-isolating early days of parenthood.

“We understand that shared experiences help strengthen those bonds,” explains Dr. Lori Wasserman, psychiatrist and clinical lead of the RLS program. “These subgroups offer a supportive space where parents can share their journeys and connect with others who truly understand.”

The program’s virtual format has also been crucial in making mental health services more accessible. Unlike traditional in-person therapy, which can be difficult to manage alongside the demands of caring for a newborn, Postpartum Matters allows parents to access materials and respond to prompts at their convenience. Moderated by a WCH therapist, the discussion forum ensures professional guidance while fitting into the unpredictable routines of new parenthood.

“The flexibility of virtual care has been a game-changer,” says Dr. Wasserman. “For parents with unpredictable schedules, virtual options offer a critical way to access support without the constraints of traditional in-person appointments.”

As the program looks to the future, it will continue to evolve in response to growing needs and feedback. “There’s an increasing demand for more specialized groups, like those for single or trans parents, to better address their unique challenges,” says Dr. Wasserman. “We try to offer as much choice as we can with the resources available."

By prioritizing mental health, tailoring care to the specific needs of diverse populations, and offering more flexible options for support, Canada is moving closer to a healthcare system that truly serves the needs of new parents. These efforts represent a crucial step toward a more compassionate and effective maternal healthcare system, one that can improve the well-being of parents and children alike.