Steve Lurie recently retired as the Executive Director of the Canadian Mental Health Association Toronto Branch, a post he held since 1979. Steve has written and lectured extensively on mental health policy issues. He was a principal author of the Graham Report, Building Community Support for People, and conducted the 1992 snapshot of community mental health programs for the Ontario Ministry of Health and the Minimum Data Set Pilot Project (1998), which established a common data set for the reporting of client characteristics and outcomes in community and hospital based mental health services. He served as guest editor of the Canadian Journal of Community Mental Health special issue, Innovation in Community Mental Health: International Perspectives and their recent special issues on Canada’s Mental Health Strategy. He recently co-chaired the HQO Quality Standard on Schizophrenia Care in the Community, and currently is the co-chair of the Toronto Police Service Mental Health and Addictions Advisory Panel. Steve is an executive lead on the Toronto Supportive Housing Growth Plan, a project of the Wellesley Institute, CMHA Toronto, Toronto Alliance to End Homelessness and the Toronto Supportive Housing Network. He has an appointment as a Senior Fellow at the Wellesley Institute. He was recently appointed as co- chair of the Toronto Crisis Pilot Community Advisory Table.
Since 2004 Steve has had a collaborative relationship with SCARF, a community mental health and research organization in Chennai, India. In 2007 Steve provided technical assistance to the development of a national mental health plan in Kyrgyzstan, through a project funded by the Soros Foundation. As well Steve and CMHA Toronto have hosted organizations from China, India, US, New Zealand, Australia, the UK and Japan. In 2008 Steve lectured in Japan about community mental health systems, hosted by the Matsubara Psychiatric Hospital.
In 2005 he provided technical assistance to the Senate Committee Report Out of the Shadows At Last: Transforming Mental Health and Addiction Services in Canada.
In August 2007 he was appointed to chair the Service Systems Advisory Committee for the newly established Mental Health Commission of Canada. He was awarded the Canadian Mental Health Association’s CM Hincks award for national leadership in mental health and the President’s Award for outstanding contributions, by Addictions and Mental Health Ontario and recently was named to the Order of Canada for his contributions as leader, scholar and advocate in 2016. In November 2017 he was honoured by CAMH as one of Canada’s Difference Makers in mental health and addictions.
Steve has a Masters in Management (MM) from the McGill McConnell Voluntary Sector Leadership program (2002) and has a BA (1971) and MSW (1973) from the University of Toronto Faculty of Social Work where he is now an adjunct professor.
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