ArticlePLOS mental health2026
From crisis to recovery: Exploring the demand surge for mental health services in Alberta, Canada-A document-based policy analysis with an illustrative supply-demand simulation (2023-2024).
Article in PLOS mental health, 2026. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Not yet cited in PubMed.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
0 citing papers in PubMed.
No citing paper in PubMed yet.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
10 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
COVID-19 coincided with increased mental health needs in Alberta, Canada, intensifying pre-existing access gaps and service strain. Alberta responded with publicly funded interventions spanning digital care, youth-focused services, and recovery-oriented programs. To evaluate Alberta's system-level response to pandemic-related increases in mental health help-seeking/service uptake using a health economics and policy lens. We extracted empirically reported program delivery outputs from the 2023-2024 Alberta Mental Health and Addiction Annual Report. We used a simulation calibrated to reported trends to examine directional changes in help-seeking (demand), service capacity (supply), and the modeled equilibrium quantity under a zero-copayment design. Empirically reported outputs indicate that delivery met or exceeded planned/funded milestones for CASA Mental Health, VODP, and tele-mental health, while recovery communities reflected phased implementation. In the illustrative simulation, the demand-implied volume increases from 60 to 87 services/month, but delivered volume is capacity-constrained at 78 services/month (implying ~9 services/month unmet demand), while a unit-cost proxy is held constant for visualization (not an observed market price or patient copayment). Alberta's response illustrates how coordinated, publicly funded capacity expansion and access-oriented policies can support service delivery during system shocks; the model also highlights that if capacity growth lags demand growth, unmet need may persist even under zero copayment.
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.