Srividya Iyer, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor in the Department of Psychiatry and an Associate Member of the Department of Epidemiology, Biostatistics and Occupational Health at McGill University in Montreal, Canada. She is a licensed psychologist and a Researcher at the Douglas Mental Health University Institute and the Prevention and Early Intervention Program for Psychosis (PEPP) in Montreal. She is a member of McGill’s Division of Social and Transcultural Psychiatry, its Global Mental Health Program and its Indigenous Special Interest Group. Srividya is part of the steering committee for the Multicultural Mental Health Resource Centre.
Srividya’s work focuses on youth mental health and early intervention, especially for psychosis. Her research aims to ensure that more young people worldwide have timely access to appropriate, youth-friendly mental healthcare and enjoy well-being and social participation. Srividya partners closely with young people, families and communities to influence real-world practice and policy in Canada and globally. She leads ACCESS Open Minds, a pan-Canadian network of 250+ diverse stakeholders that is seeking to transform mental healthcare for urban, rural, Indigenous, post-secondary and homeless youths across Canada.
Srividya contributes to several other youth- and early intervention-focused services, research and capacity-building efforts in Canada and globally, especially in India, where she was born, completed her initial training in psychology and worked as the sole psychologist in one of the world’s busiest public hospitals. Srividya is committed to helping ensure equitable mental healthcare access and outcomes to underserved populations such as Indigenous youths, visible and linguistic minority youths, homeless youths, youths in low- and middle-income countries and looked-after youths.
In 2017, Srividya won the Principal’s Prize for Outstanding Emerging Researchers and the Maude Abbott Prize for outstanding research accomplishments. She was also inducted into the College of New Scholars, Artists and Scientists of the Royal Society of Canada, and named on the inaugural list of Canadian Women leaders in Global Health. In 2021, she was elected Vice-President of the International Association for Youth Mental Health.
In addition to a thematic focus on early intervention and youth mental health, Srividya’s program of research reflects her interests in using multiple quantitative, qualitative and mixed methods; engaging diverse stakeholders, particularly youth and family service users; implementation science; integrated knowledge translation; interdisciplinary work; and building sustainable, collaborative capacity within community contexts.
As a psychologist, Srividya gained assessment and treatment experience in India, the United States, and Canada. Her interests are in the design and delivery of mental health services and learning health systems; cognitive-behavioral therapy; mindfulness-based approaches; clinical supervision; and program leadership.
Srividya enjoys mentoring undergraduate and graduate students, post-doctoral fellows, research associates, research-track residents and other trainees. She is available for research supervision of students in the fields of applied social science, psychology, social work, psychiatry, public health, global health and epidemiology.
srividya.iyer [at] mcgill.ca (Email)
Select publications
Hawke, L. D., Thabane, L., Wilkins, L., Mathias, S., Iyer, S., & Henderson, J. (2021). Don’t Forget the Caregivers! A Discrete Choice Experiment Examining Caregiver Views of Integrated Youth Services. The Patient-Patient-Centered Outcomes Research, 1-12.
Qureshi, O., Endale, T., Ryan, G., Miguel-Esponda, G., Iyer, S.N., Eaton, J., De Silva, M., & Murphy, J. (2021). Barriers to and drivers of the implementation of global mental health projects: Service Delivery. International Journal of Mental Health Systems. https://doi.org/10.1186/s13033-020-00427-x
Cowan, T., Pope, M.A., Macdonald, K., Malla, A., Ferrari, M#., & Iyer, S.N# (2020). Engagement in specialized early intervention services for psychosis as an interplay between personal agency and critical structures: A qualitative study. International Journal of Nursing Studies, 103583 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijnurstu.2020.103583 #Equal contributions.
Guinaudie, C., Mireault, C., Tan, J.*, Pelling, Y.*, Jalali, S.*, Malla, A. & Iyer, S.N. (2020). Shared decision making in a youth mental health services design and research: insights from the pan-Canadian ACCESS Open Minds network. The Patient 13(6), 653-666. https://doi.org/10.1007/s40271-020-00444-5. Invited manuscript for shared decision-making edition.* Youth and family council members
Iyer, S.N., Malla, A., Taksal, A., Maraj, A., Mohan, G., Rangaswamy, T., Ramachandran, P., Margolese, H.C., Schmitz, N., & Joober, R. (2020). Context and contact: A comparison of patient and family engagement with early intervention services for psychosis in India and Canada. Psychological medicine. 1-10. DOI: 10.1017/S0033291720003359
Iyer, S., Mustafa, S., Moro, L., Jarvis, G.E., Joober, R., Abadi, S., Casacalenda, N., Margolese, H., Abdel-Baki, A., Lepage, M., & Malla, A. (2020). Suicidality over the first five years of psychosis: Does extending early intervention have benefits? The Canadian journal of psychiatry. https://doi.org/10.1177/0706743720961714
Iyer, S.N., Pope, M., Jordan, G., Mohan, G., Loohuis, H., Ramachandran, R., Thara, R. & Malla, A. (2020). ShareDisk: A novel visual tool to assess perceptions about who should be responsible for supporting persons with mental health problems. International Journal of Social Psychiatry. 66(4), 411–418. https://doi.org/10.1177/0020764020913580
MacDonald, K., Ferrari, M., Fainman-Adelman, N., & Iyer, S. N. (2020). Experiences of pathways to mental health services for young people and their carers: A qualitative meta-synthesis review. Social Psychiatry and Psychiatric Epidemiology. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00127-020-01976-9.
Iyer, S.N., Shah, J., Boksa, P., Lal, S., Joober, R., Andersson, N., Fuhrer, R., Abdel-Baki, A., Beaton, A., Reaume-Zimmer, P., Hutt-MacLeod, D., Levasseur, M.A#., Chandrasena, R., Rousseau, C., Torrie, J., Etter, M., Vallianatos, H., Abbaji, A., Bighead, S., MacKinnon, A., & Malla A.K. (2019). A minimum evaluation protocol and stepped-wedge cluster randomized trial of ACCESS Open Minds, a large Canadian youth mental health services transformation project. BMC Psychiatry. 19(1): 273. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12888-019-2232-2 # Family partner with lived experience.
Jordan, G., Malla, A., & Iyer, S.N (2019). "It's brought me a lot closer to who I am": A mixed methods study of posttraumatic growth and positive change following a first episode of psychosis. Frontiers in Psychiatry, 10:480. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyt.2019.00480
Maraj, A., Mustafa, S., Joober, R., Malla, A., Shah, J., & Iyer, S.N. (2019). Caught in the "NEET trap": The intersection between youth NEET status and disengagement from an early intervention service for psychosis. Psychiatric Services. 70(4):302-308. https://doi.org/10.1176/appi.ps.201800319. Selected as editor’s choice
Gariépy, G., & Iyer, S. #(2018). The mental health of young Canadians who are not working or in school. The Canadian Journal of Psychiatry. 64(5):338-344. https://doi.org/10.1177/0706743718815899
MacDonald, K., Fainman-Adelman, N., Anderson, K. K., & Iyer, S. N. (2018). Pathways to Mental Health Services for young people: A Systematic Review. Social Psychiatry and Psychiatric Epidemiology. 53(10): 1005-1038. doi: 10.1007/s00127-018-1578-y Invited Review
Levasseur, M. A*, Ferrari, M., McIlwaine, S., & Iyer, S.N. (2018). Peer-driven family support services in the context of first-episode psychosis: Participant perceptions from a Canadian early intervention programme. Early Intervention in Psychiatry. 13(2):335-341. https://doi.org/10.1111/eip.12771 *Family partner with lived experience #Senior author
Malla, A., Iyer, S., McGorry, P., Cannon, M., Coughlan, H., Singh, S., Jones, P., & Joober, R. (2016). From early intervention in psychosis to youth mental health reform: a review of the evolution and transformation of mental health services for young people. Social psychiatry and psychiatric epidemiology, 51(3), 319-326.
Iyer, S.N. , Boksa, P., Lal, S., Shah, J., Marandola, G., Jordan, G., Doyle, M., Joober, R., & Malla, A.K. (2015). Transforming youth mental health: A Canadian perspective. Irish Journal of Psychological Medicine (Special Focus on Youth Mental Health: International Perspectives). 32(1):51-60. https://doi.org/10.1017/ipm.2014.89
Iyer, S.N., Jordan, G., MacDonald, K., Joober, R., & Malla, A. (2015). Early intervention for psychosis: A Canadian perspective. Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease. 203(5):356-364. DOI: 10.1097/NMD.0000000000000288