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By Susan McNeil

Child psychiatry

New child psychiatrist coming to Prince Albert in the spring

Dec 13, 2025 | 8:00 AM

Child and youth psychiatrist services in Prince Albert seem to be on the rebound.

The SHA confirmed yesterday that a new psychiatrist will begin work in March 2026, more than doubling the in-person services available in the city.

Currently, in-person help is available for one week out of every six by an out-of-town psychiatrist. That person also offers online counselling. A second person offers only online services to the city, but the new psychiatrist will be based in Prince Albert, in addition to a person who works out of Saskatoon and offers online appointments.

If needed, children could also book appointments with the part-time psychiatrist, but the new position will work locally and the SHA is still recruiting.

The SHA said that having more people available may allow for more child psychiatric beds at the Victoria Hospital, a service that has been lacking for several years.

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Several days ago, the provincial auditor’s annual report included a follow-up to a previous investigation in 2018 into how quickly access to mental health and addictions services is available in the city.

The report found significant improvement, mostly accomplished by making digital services more efficient.

A mental health and addiction IT system has been created that creates a single client file for mental health and addiction services that are provided for both outpatient and inpatient settings. That system is expected to be active by March 2028, and all providers will be expected to use it.

“Having a single file that includes all mental health and addictions services provided to a client will better help healthcare providers in determining the next appropriate course of action for clients,” said the report.

Some data will be shared between Corrections, Policing, Social Services, Health and the Saskatchewan Housing Corporation in order to help the provincial approach to homelessness initiative (PATH) respond to growing levels of chronic homelessness.

The SHA will monitor the results.

In the 2018 investigation, the auditor found that the former Prince Albert Parkland Health Region didn’t meet their wait time targets for mental health and addictions services. At the same time, the region was spending the second-highest per capita on those services, and 80 per cent of child/youth clients waited longer than 20 days to get an appointment.

About 40 per cent of clients were not showing up for appointments, and the health region at the time couldn’t show that it had followed up with clients who missed appointments.

Parkland executives said that it was primarily low-risk clients who waited for longer periods to see someone, and it was difficult to follow up with those clients who didn’t have an address or a phone number.

The same audit found healthcare services inside provincial correctional centres to be lacking. Two of those are located in Prince Albert, the Saskatchewan Penitentiary and Pine Grove, a women’s prison.

Maintaining child psychiatric services in Prince Albert has been an issue for several years.

A long-time doctor retired, and his replacement left after a year, saying he was overworked. The 10-bed child psych beds in the hospital were subsequently closed.

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susan.mcneil@pattisonmedia.com

On BlueSky: @susanmcneil.bsky.social