{"id":10770,"date":"2025-11-19T17:16:39","date_gmt":"2025-11-19T20:16:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/2025\/11\/19\/rural-recruitment-mental-health-funding-are-challenges-for-psychiatry-sector-in-n-b-association-says\/"},"modified":"2025-11-19T17:16:39","modified_gmt":"2025-11-19T20:16:39","slug":"rural-recruitment-mental-health-funding-are-challenges-for-psychiatry-sector-in-n-b-association-says","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/2025\/11\/19\/rural-recruitment-mental-health-funding-are-challenges-for-psychiatry-sector-in-n-b-association-says\/","title":{"rendered":"Rural recruitment, mental health funding are challenges for psychiatry sector in N.B., association says"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<p>New Brunswick\u00b7NewThe New Brunswick government is looking to address challenges within the province\u2019s mental health system \u2014 including a low number of psychiatrists to treat the population. The head of the New Brunswick Psychiatric Association said there are several issues facing the sector in the province, including recruitment. Province says its working on a resource strategy to address recruitment, retention, support for psychiatristsHannah Rudderham  \u00b7 CBC News  \u00b7 Posted: Nov 19, 2025 12:20 PM EST | Last Updated: 10 minutes agoListen to this articleEstimated 3 minutesThe audio version of this article is generated by text-to-speech, a technology based on artificial intelligence.Rob McKee, the minister responsible for addictions and mental health services, says there are over 31 vacancies in the province for psychiatrists.   (Victoria Walton\/CBC)The New Brunswick government is looking into ways to address challenges within the province\u2019s mental health system \u2014 particularily when it comes to the low number of psychiatrists available to treat people in the province.Rob McKee, the minister responsible for addictions and mental health services, said there are over 31 vacancies in the province for psychiatrists.In Canada, there\u2019s an average of about 15 psychiatrists per 100,000 people, said McKee. But the ratio in New Brunswick is around 11 per 100,000 people.The province is now implementing its Psychiatry Resource Strategy, which aims to address this problem by strengthening recruitment, retention and support for psychiatrists across New Brunswick.Recruitment challenges Dr. Anthony Njoku, the president of the New Brunswick Psychiatric Association, said there are several issues facing the sector in the province, including recruitment.\u201cNew Brunswick is a bit off the map, it\u2019s not exactly the prime choice of location for most people, most specialists or professionals,\u201d said Njoku.\u201cEven within New Brunswick, of course, the rural areas predominantly are under-resourced, far above perhaps Fredericton or any of the other urban centers\u2026 most people are drawn to the urban areas rather than the rural areas.\u201dNjoku said the province did increase recruitment incentives for rural areas, which he said will help. But, at the same time, New Brunswick has also been \u201cplaying catch up with the rest of the provinces across Canada.\u201dThe overall funding of mental health services is also a challenge. Njoku said funding for mental health resources is around 6 per cent of the health budget, lower than the national standard of 12 per cent.Njoku also said a lot of newer doctors are putting a stronger emphasis on work-life balance, so it\u2019s difficult to replace retiring physicians with the same number of graduating doctors.Psychiatrists in collaborative care clinics may be an optionMcKee said part of the province\u2019s strategy will include expanding psychiatry seats at the University of New Brunswick and Dalhousie University.The strategy will also involve using collaborative care clinics to see how psychiatrists fit into that model.\u201cCan we do that with psychiatry as well?\u201d said McKee. \u201cHow can we have multi-disciplinary teams that we can create synergies, get more people through the door and getting access to the care they need?\u201dPart of that will be ensuring there are proper incentives for psychiatrists to work in these types of settings, said McKee.Njoku said psychiatrists in New Brunswick recognize a trend towards collaborative practices, which is already happening on a small scale with a psychiatrist offering consultations at a group practice in Moncton and some outside-hours support at the Downtown Health Centre in Fredericton.\u201cSome of my psychiatric colleagues are asking that they should be able to run a couple of after-hours within their existing office space with additional admin support,\u201d said Njoku.\u201cThat should be something that either the province, in collaboration with Horizon or Vitalit\u00e9, ought to be able to sort of set up and support\u2026 These are some of the fresh approaches we may have to adopt to get us moving.\u201dABOUT THE AUTHORHannah Rudderham is a reporter with CBC New Brunswick. She grew up in Cape Breton, N.S., and moved to Fredericton in 2018. You can send story tips to hannah.rudderham@cbc.ca.With files from Information Morning Moncton<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>New Brunswick\u00b7NewThe New Brunswick government is looking to address challenges within the province\u2019s mental health system \u2014 including a low number of psychiatrists to treat the population. The head of the New Brunswick Psychiatric Association said there are several issues facing the sector in the province, including recruitment. Province says its working on a resource [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":10771,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[118,125,1],"tags":[116,124],"class_list":["post-10770","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-indigenous","category-new-brunswick","category-uncategorized","tag-indigenous","tag-new-brunswick"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10770","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10770"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10770\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10771"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10770"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10770"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10770"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}