The new Mental Health Building at Children's Hospital opened in January, 2007. Here, mental health professionals manage patients on an age-related basis, rather than focusing on their disease. In addition to caring for adolescents’ medical needs, staff members work hard to address the unique psycho-social requirements of teens, and to facilitate their coping with conditions that are often chronic and complex. The four-storey centre promotes healing in a family-centered environment and is home to the Hospital's mental health inpatient and outpatient clinics and services, providing a strong population base for investigators to apply the valuable new knowledge being uncovered through their research at the adjacent Research Institute.

The Child & Family Research Institute is actively engaged in research to improve understanding and treatment of disorders affecting the brain and behaviour, mental illness and severe forms of depression. In collaboration with the Hospital and the regional health authorities, investigators at the Research Institute support children and youth province wide by working to develop better prevention, early identification, medication, intervention, rehabilitation, and other methods of care for children and teens with mental illness.