Dr. Patrick Smith is the inaugural President and CEO of Canada’s new Centre of Excellence for PTSD and Related Mental Health Concerns – funded by Veterans Affairs Canada. Previously, Patrick served as the National CEO of the Canadian Mental Health Association and as CEO of Renascent, Canada's leading abstinence-based residential addictions treatment provider. He also previously served as the Vice President, Research, Networks and Academic Development at the BC Mental Health and Addictions Services of the Provincial Health Services Authority in British Columbia and was founding Head of UBC's Addiction Psychiatry Program. Prior to that, Patrick served as the Vice President of Clinical Programs at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH) and was Head of the Addiction Psychiatry Division for the University of Toronto. As a clinical psychologist focusing on addictions, he received his PhD from the University of Nebraska and internship and NIDA postdoctoral fellowship at the Yale University School of Medicine. He was a Fulbright Scholar at the University of Canterbury in Christchurch, New Zealand. A founding member of the Canadian Executive Council on Addictions, Dr. Smith represented Canada as a delegate to the United Nations Committee on Narcotic Drugs (UN-CND) in both 2004 and 2009 and co-chaired the development of Canada’s National Addictions Treatment Strategy. He also served as a member of the 2019 Canadian Delegation to the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA). Dr Smith was one of four participants internationally selected to do an intervention from the floor of the first ever side event focused on mental health at the UNGA. In addition to his clinical and research background, his primary focus has been in health leadership and health systems planning and development.

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