Meet the Division of Mental Health and Addiction Team

Dr. Carrie Bernard received her medical degree from McMaster University in 1997 and completed her family medicine residency at the University of Toronto. She has practised comprehensive family medicine since 1999 with the Queen Square Family Health Team in Brampton, and is an Assistant Professor in DFCM and an Assistant Clinical Professor in the Department of Family Medicine at McMaster. Passionate about community and global health, Dr. Bernard worked with Médecins Sans Frontières in northern Uganda from 2004 to 2005, and Public Health Ontario from 2012 to 2019. Her research interests focus on ethics in medical practice, and she is a member of the Humanitarian Health Ethics Research Group, a multidisciplinary team of researchers and practitioners in Canada who explore ethical issues related to humanitarian health care work.

As CPD and Partnerships Lead, Dr. Bernard provides leadership in developing, implementing, and routinely reporting on DMHA CPD initiatives and key partnerships. This includes the oversight of DMHA CPD activities with the purpose of increasing capacity in mental health and addiction care across the university’s faculty sites and the province as a whole, as well as leading the development and implementation of a partnerships strategy that aligns with DFCM priorities.

Dr. Mel Borins is a Family Physician in private practice. He is an Associate Professor in the Department of Family and Community Medicine at the University of Toronto and on active staff at St. Joseph's Health Centre. He is a Fellow of the CFPC and has been the Course Director of  “Counselling and Psychotherapy-a Five Weekend Program” at the University of Toronto for the past 18 years.

He is author of the books “Go Away Just for the Health of It”, "An Apple a Day- a Holistic Health Primer", “A Doctor’s Guide to Alternative Medicine-What Works, What Doesn’t and Why” and “Photos and Songs of a Pronoic Physician”. Dr. Borins has lectured in Canada, U.S.A., India, Japan, Indonesia, China, Taiwan, Korea, Sri Lanka and New Zealand on health and healing.  

Dr. Erin Lurie is the Program Director for the Enhanced Skills training program for Addictions Medicine at the University of Toronto. She has been an academic family physician working with patients who use substances since completing her enhanced skills training in 2018. She is the lead of the "My Baby and Me" program which aims to support women who use substances throughout their pregnancy and post partum period.

Dr. Lurie works as a physician on the Addictions Medicine team at St. Michael's Hospital where she supports patients through their inpatient and outpatient team. She was the 2023 recipient of the PARO Excellence in Clinical Teaching Award for the University of Toronto. Her interests include addressing barriers to care for patients that use substances, as well as perinatal substance use medicine. 

Dr. Kristina Powles is a community family physician, practising comprehensive family medicine and low risk obstetrics. Academically, she is affiliated with the Mount Sinai Academic Family Health team where she is co-lead of the collaborative mental health care program, and coordinator for the residency mental health curriculum.

She is also chair of the Rotenberg Mental Health program at the FHT, which integrates clinical, educational, and research mental health programming.​ Dr. Powles is especially interested in enriching collaborative mental health and addiction care systems and practices, utilizing education science to increase knowledge, and capacity for primary care providers and family medicine residents.

Dr. Peter Selby is the Vice Chair of Research, Director of the Mental Health and Addictions Division, and Giblon Professor in the Department of Family and Community Medicine, University of Toronto.  He is also a Senior Medical Consultant and Clinician Scientist at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health. He is an addictions medicine physician with a research focus on innovative methods to understand and treat addictive behaviours and their comorbidities.

He uses technology to combine clinical medicine and public health methods to scale up and test health interventions.  His cohort of >300,000 treated smokers in Ontario is an example of this. He has received grant funding totalling over 100 million dollars from CIHR, NIH, and Ministry of Health and has published >200 peer reviewed publications.  His most recent programme of research utilizes a Learning Health Systems approach to investigate how technology equitable collaborative care can enhance the delivery of evidence-based interventions to the patient while providing a more satisfying experience of care for patient and provider.

Dr. Bill Watson is a family physician based at St. Micheal's Hospital.His scope of family practice includes prenatal care, mental health and chronic disease. Dr. Watson is actively involved in teaching at all levels: undergraduate, post-graduate students and fellows.

Dr. Sarah Whynot completed her family medicine residency and enhanced skills fellowships in both Emergency and Addiction Medicine at the University of Toronto. She currently practices Emergency Medicine as well as Addiction Medicine at St. Joseph’s Health Centre and Michael Garron Hospital in Toronto. Dr. Whynot is a dedicated Clinical Educator and Lecturer at DFCM, and is passionate about expanding access to high quality mental health and substance use care across clinical settings.

As Education Lead, Dr. Whynot provides leadership and mentorship in applying and evaluating innovative educational strategies to build mental health and addiction care capacity among all levels of learners. This includes reviewing postgraduate medical education to identify educational opportunities, leading scholarly education initiatives, and identifying relevant family medicine educational standards and best practices in undergraduate and postgraduate mental health and addiction education.

Dr. Jennifer Wyman is an assistant professor at the Department of Family & Community Medicine. She is the Medical Director of the Substance Use service at Women's College Hospital as well as a Medical Educator with META:PHI (Mentoring, Education, and Clinical Training Tools for Addiction: Partners in Health Integration). 

Dr. Wyman's practice is centred on addiction medicine and primary care. Her interests focus on improving the quality of care and pathways for people who use substances.