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Make time for mental health in the new year
The beginning of a new year is synonymous with change. But as our resolutions abound, the pressures of ambitious goals and new routines can take precedence over our mental health.
If you’re already feeling depleted — perhaps in actively caregiving for a loved one — carving out a little time for yourself is even more important.
This year, the Mental Health Commission of Canada (MHCC) would like to encourage you to rethink your resolutions and channel your energy into making your own mental health a priority. You may be surprised at the ripple effect when you make mental wellness job one.
Make time to practise self-care
Self-care is paramount to our overall mental health and well-being, and the investment of a little time and energy can pay big dividends. The new year is a great time to start a self-care routine or revamp an old one with some new practices.
Consider these simple self-care ideas:
- Clean or declutter a space in your home where you can go when feeling overwhelmed.
- Include music in your everyday life to boost your motivation or help you relax.
- Exercise to manage stress and elevate your mood.
- Volunteer your time — doing so has proven mental health benefits.
For more self-care ideas, follow the MHCC on Instagram, where we share curated self-care tips every Sunday.
Make time to talk about mental health
The annual Bell Let’s Talk campaign reminds us that when we’re open to talking about mental health, we’re helping to break down barriers that force many of us into silence. Make time for conversations with friends and colleagues about mental health — and let them know you’re available as a non-judgmental sounding board. You could do this by following mental health leaders on social media or posting thoughtful content. Offering a kind, attentive ear can be life changing for someone, especially if they are sharing their experience for the first time.
Being an avid listener might also inspire you to share your own story.
Whether you’re opening up one-on-one or sharing more widely, talking about your lived experience of a mental health problem or illness needs to be done with care. A recent Catalyst article offers guidance on how to share your story safely and decide if 2020 is the right time for you.
Make time to learn more
Consider broadening your mental health knowledge by joining the almost 500,000 people in Canada who’ve taken Mental Health First Aid (MHFA). MHFA offers practical tools to support someone who is experiencing a mental health problem or crisis. Like traditional first aid, MHFA training gives you the confidence to help out in an emergency while increasing your knowledge of common mental health problems.
The MHCC Resources page has a range of other courses, webinars, and tools to help you build your mental health literacy.
Make time for specialized supports
The MHCC recognizes that caregivers need specialized resources to support their unique circumstances. If you’re a caregiver (or know someone who is), check our website in the coming weeks for our new compendium of caregiver resources.
In the meantime, our Caregiver Mobilization Toolkit can help influence decision makers in your community improve the experience of everyone in the circle of care.
Making time for mental health doesn’t have to be complicated. With a little effort and positive intention, it might be the most effective change you make this year.
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MHCC president and CEO anticipates greater impact and collaboration in the year ahead
We’re only a week into 2020, but I’m pleased to share that it’s shaping up to be an exciting year for the Mental Health Commission of Canada (MHCC) and our many partners across the sector.
This will be the year we build on the enormous success of the world’s first workplace psychological health and safety standard by launching its natural followup: the post-secondary student standard.
Together with Bell Canada, the Rossy Family Foundation, RBC and, of course, the guidance and expertise of CSA Group — Canada’s trusted standards organization — we’ll be giving every post-secondary campus across the country a baseline for measuring progress and a framework for building improved mental health services for students. I truly believe this building-block approach to promotion and prevention is the best way to integrate psychological wellness into Canadian society.
Just as this work by organizations is extremely important, so too is fostering the expertise in our communities with training like Mental Health First Aid (MHFA).
Earlier this year, when I was asked, “Why should people take such training?” it struck me that, until the answer becomes as obvious as it is with physical first aid training, we’ve still got important work to do on raising awareness.
In response, I offered this: “If someone was choking in a restaurant, would you want to know how to help? Well, what if someone was having a panic attack in a stuck elevator or a stalled subway? Would you want to know how to support them until a professional arrived?”
Of course, the answer was a resounding “yes.” And I’m not surprised it was, given this year’s huge MHFA milestone: that half a million people in Canada will have taken the training, something we plan to celebrate with a very special Canadian icon who offered to be number 500,000. Stay tuned!
Given that the MHCC has also deepened its relationships across the provinces and territories in 2019 — with projects like Roots of Hope and our successful e-mental health demonstration project in Newfoundland and Labrador — we are now considering how best to build on these partnerships.
In fact, this renewed focus on collaboration has inspired us to embark on strategic planning to better identify our place among Canada’s many important champions of mental health.
We believe that, by listening to our stakeholders and staff, evaluating our successes, and understanding where we may have fallen short, we can recalibrate as an organization to give our work the greatest impact and ensure we continue to support those who might otherwise be overlooked.
Finally, as we strive to lead by example, I am extremely proud — and humbled — to say that, after nearly five years of working with Indigenous partners, and with the guidance and advice of generous Indigenous mentors — 2020 will be the year the MHCC formalizes a declaration of reconciliation. More than words, the declaration will shape our efforts to work supportively with Indigenous organizations seeking our partnership.
Given the extent of these many priorities, it is expected that certain parts of our work will have reached their natural conclusion. For example, we will be transitioning the stewardship of our HEADSTRONG youth anti-stigma summits to the Canadian Mental Health Association (CMHA), whose 300 offices and 5,000 staff members will continue supporting its growth at the grassroots level.
As I said at the CMHA Mental Health for All Conference in September, it’s high time the mental health sector came together in a spirit of collaboration. After all, “who does what” matters a lot less than “what gets done.”
Let 2020 be the year we move from patchwork to quilt — blanketing this great country with improved access to services, increased suicide prevention efforts, more training and resources, and a greater sense of cultural humility.
Happy New Year!
Louise Bradley
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New understanding of Indigenous history inspires MHCC staff
As twenty Mental Health Commission of Canada (MHCC) staff members seated themselves in a circle in a small, windowless room, a sense of trepidation was in the air. While some had experience working with Indigenous communities, others were only faintly familiar with what it entailed. But everyone had heard that the KAIROS Blanket Exercise could be emotionally difficult.
Fortunately, the unease was quickly dispelled by Elder Reta Gordon and facilitator Julie Vachon.
“We’re here,” Vachon said, “not to place shame or guilt. We are here to lift the veil of denial and shed light on truth.”
The blanket exercise is as visceral as it is visual. Blankets are spread out on the floor to represent a map of North America. Participants take off their shoes before taking a place on the blankets — each representing a territory of the estimated 20 million Indigenous people who occupied this land before European contact. As land is taken, as disease spreads, as government policies targeted at assimilation gain momentum, participants are forced off their blankets and return to their seats — until what remains is a shadow of the once thriving civilization, diverse in language, culture, and customs.
The feeling of history echoing through the centuries was almost palpable. The exercise works so well because participants are more than attendees — they are both audience and storytellers. They become living embodiments of the traumatic past: the dead of the Métis uprising; Indigenous people who succumbed to starvation; children taken from their homes to endure residential schools or caught up in the 60s scoop; and missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls.
The most profound moment of the day came when Vachon asked participants to observe a moment of silence for those who endured these adversities. “Take a moment to sit in discomfort,” she said. “Move away from the habit of disconnecting from uncomfortable feelings.”
From that discomfort emerged a more positive discourse: the contemplation of those who survived unthinkable adversity — who sustained intergenerational trauma and experienced state-sanctioned racism — only to rise on the other side as living examples of strength, resiliency, and compassion, having reclaimed cultures and kinships against all odds.
“I realize I have only just begun to skim the surface of others’ experiences,” said Julia Armstrong, a program manager with the MHCC’s prevention and promotion team, one of many participants who expressed frustration at having been taught so little about Indigenous history.
She sees this new learning as a responsibility. “I’ve been given this gift of working for an organization that prioritizes reconciliation so staff can grow and learn as individuals. I want to pay that forward and share the wisdom I’ve gained with my circle of family, friends, and colleagues.”
And that is precisely the kind of change the facilitators hope to effect.
“People ask, ‘What can we do?’ They say, ‘Now that we know better, how can we do better?’” said Gordon. “To them I say this,” Vachon answered, “Don’t go out and do grand gestures — those feed the ego. Go out and do small acts. Talk to others. If each of you reached out and shared this new knowledge with one more person, and that person in turn did the same, think of what we could accomplish. We would chip away at the misunderstandings and the damaging stereotypes, leading us to a place free from judgment where compassion can flourish.”
“The KAIROS Blanket Exercise is one piece of cultural competency I encourage everyone to experience,” said Louise Bradley, MHCC president and CEO. “As individuals, we have a responsibility to deepen our understanding of history and make meaningful steps in our personal journeys of reconciliation. As an organization, we are fortunate to be able to foster that growth in our staff. I have no doubt it will inform our work in many ways, big and small.”
If you would like to participate in this unique and participatory history lesson, you can learn more here.
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Volunteering, an antidote to the holiday blues
The holidays aren’t always a time of celebration. For some, stress and anxiety are as pervasive as the pretty decorations that adorn offices and storefronts. While it may be counterintuitive, getting out and doing good for others can be a powerful antidote to the holiday blues.
According to Keith Dobson, professor of clinical psychology at the University of Calgary and past president of the Canadian Association of Cognitive and Behavioural Therapies, it’s not uncommon to prescribe volunteerism to help clients become more active and engaged in their lives.
“Altruism is associated with lots of positive benefits,” said Dobson, who used to volunteer at a crisis line as an undergraduate student. “I developed psychological counselling skills, connected with like-minded students, and was able to give back to the community.”
But, as he also points out, the motivation behind the volunteerism matters. “In psychology, we talk about attributions for behaviour — in other words, the causes for why we do things. Interestingly, we derive the greatest reward from volunteerism when we aren’t seeking any personal gain.”
Dobson listed several potential benefits of volunteerism, which include becoming more connected with others, combating social isolation, improving your physical health, and bringing fun and fulfilment into your life. Volunteering also has the advantage of costing you little or nothing except your time and commitment.
He believes that the more you’re doing it because of “internal attributions” — that is, so as to help others rather than gain recognition or benefits for yourself — the more rewarding the experience will be.
Wendy Hepburn, an adviser for strategic partnerships at the Mental Health Commission of Canada (MHCC), can attest to the joy derived from giving some of her time.
Once a month, she leads clients and volunteers in the preparation of a community meal at the Parkdale Food Centre. Each time, they learn new recipes, cook the food, and dine together.
“There are so many advantages to a program like this,” said Hepburn, who became visibly relaxed while sharing the experience of being part of something that works to nourish so much more than appetites. “This program does a lot more than combat hunger. It addresses the social isolation so many people feel and brings volunteers and participants a sense of accomplishment and connectedness.”
Hepburn, whose role is to make a meal plan, shop for groceries, then help prepare the meal, smiled as she recounted a few of the recipe fails. “This isn’t about cooking a picture-perfect dinner. It’s about the laughs we share when something goes wrong, the skills we learn from the clients who’ve worked in food service, and the sense of adventure that comes from trying new foods.”
It’s that same sense of adventure that inspired Erin Wake, an MHCC knowledge mobilization coordinator, to spend a week of her vacation volunteering at Camp To Belong, where siblings separated by the foster system are reunited for a marvellous week of togetherness.
“I can’t begin to tell you all the things I got out of that week,” she said, as tears welled up in her eyes while recalling the joy and wonder of watching brothers and sisters reconnect. “What a gift it is to know you can get so much by simply giving your time.”
Wake, who has made volunteerism a central part of her life, acknowledges that it’s a feel-good activity with zero cost and a 100 per cent net benefit.
That’s partly why companies have begun recognizing the value of harnessing employees’ altruism. In The Business Case for Giving Back, an April 2019 report by Volunteer Canada and its partners, 70 per cent of the 66,000 employees surveyed said they’d be more loyal to an organization that helps them contribute to social and environmental issues.
And, as Dobson reminds us, while the holidays are the time many of us renew our focus on giving, it’s also when charitable ventures can be overwhelmed with volunteers.
“Don’t lose the momentum brought on by the holidays. Ask the agency you want to work with how you can best help them,” he said. “Consider ‘banking’ your time — and harnessing those good holiday intentions to volunteer later into the new year, when other people’s motivation tends to wane.”
For Wake and Hepburn, volunteering isn’t just an activity. It’s integral to their success, both professionally and personally.
“They say it’s selfless to volunteer,” said Wake. “And while this may sound like a cliché, the sense of fulfilment that comes from bringing joy to others is priceless.”
To find out how you can volunteer, visit Volunteer Canada or contact your local community centre.
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Giving voice to your experience is important — but so is protecting your mental wellness
Movember is upon us, the campaign that urges men to beat back stigma and conquer shame by opening up about their lived experience of mental illness. There are several platforms that encourage men to be raw and honest, like Michael Landsberg’s Sick Not Weak website, where would-be contributors can share their vulnerability in the name of collective strength.
But before putting pen to paper or speaking out in front of a group, these tips will help make sure you’re ready to take that step:
- First things first. There’s no rush — and no “right time” to tell your story. Consider checking in with a mental health professional, peer supporter, or trusted friend to see if now is a good time for you to speak out. Supporting mental health is important, but lending your voice shouldn’t set you back. And don’t beat yourself up if it’s not the right time.
- If your story includes disclosing past traumas or divulging information involving loved ones, be aware that others may have different perspectives or different feelings about privacy. While your story is yours to tell, it’s important to consider how your disclosure could affect those close to you.
- Going public can be as small as a 280-character tweet or as big as an op-ed in a national paper. Whether you prefer the intimacy of a small group of friends or the anonymity of a room full of strangers, you control how and where you share. What you can’t control is the response.
- Speakers often say they didn’t expect that sharing their story would lead to confessions from friends and strangers. If you’re open to sharing, also be prepared to listen.
- If your story involves a suicide attempt, consider consulting with local suicide prevention experts. But no matter what you’re disclosing, use words that affirm — like those in this easy-to-use Mental Health Commission of Canada (MHCC) guide.
- When sharing your experience, make reference to specific mental health resources. Someone hearing your message may need additional support.
- The safe conversations resources in the MHCC’s Toolkit for people who have been impacted by a suicide attempt can equally be applied to mental health and illness more broadly. Consider using them and sharing with family or friends.
The most important part of sharing a life-changing story is its capacity to reinforce your feelings of strength, resilience, and perseverance.
When you’re ready, there is nothing more powerful.
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On the heels of World Suicide Prevention Day (Sept. 10) and the launch of the Mental Health Commission of Canada’s (MHCC’s) national suicide prevention project, Roots of Hope, the topic has been top of mind. So when I saw respected Globe and Mail health reporter André Picard’s tweet celebrating Anna Mehler Paperny’s new book, Hello I Want to Die Please Fix Me, I was quick to order it.
When it arrived, I consumed it in one long inhalation. On the eventual exhale I knew she’d written something with the potential to change the steadfast and stigmatizing attitudes about suicide that corrode help seeking.
Paperny is a journalist. She also lives with treatment resistant depression. Her book could be summed up in three words: know thine enemy.
Using her considerable reporting skills and her unquenchable thirst for knowledge, Paperny leaves no stone unturned in her quest to understand the history of her affliction, the available treatment options, and new research shimmering like a mirage on the horizon.
While her reporting is as impeccable as her sources are unimpeachable, it is the frisson of urgency — a subtext wrought by the author’s own desperate desire for recovery — that makes this book so much more than a state of the nation on mental health care.
Each painfully personal revelation — of shame, hurt, self-loathing — pulls back the curtain inch by inch on the symptoms that can culminate in suicidal ideation. The spiral Paperny describes, of debilitating lack of energy, utter despondency, and swirling thoughts of self-obliteration, easily translate into missed deadlines and failed social engagements. Isolation begets guilt, as guilt begets negative self-talk which, in turn, is reinforced by behaviours easily criticized as selfish or self-indulgent.
And thus, the desperate cycle continues unabated.
While Paperny’s memoir is deeply affecting, it’s also a richly narrated and darkly funny. The writing itself is buoyant, gentling the reader through the complexity of brain science with an ease of reading that belies the subject’s density. She gives the lay reader the gift of understanding by translating challenging concepts into plain language — a talent that is both rare and undervalued.
Paperny’s accomplishments, her writing acumen, award-winning reporting and innovative approach, give pause to any reader who might dismiss the validity of her illness. She isn’t lazy, weak, or lacking in gumption . . . judgments endured by so many who live with mental illness. She has a loving family, and no trauma to speak of, yet cannot shake the suffocating desire to die.
Paperny is a person of wit and intellect. A loving daughter and sibling. She is “the one” in the one in five people who experience a mental illness in any given year. But what’s so much more important is that, in reading her story, she lays bare the stark reality that her illness is one that could strike any one of us. At any time.
The book is a revelation — finely wrought by her powerful writing and deeply relatable humanity — that should ignite a sense of urgency in all of us.
I encourage you to find a copy and learn more about Anna Mehler Paperny at Penguin Random House Canada.
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Language matters
From MHCC president and CEO Louise Bradley
Just ask someone who has been the victim of a racial slur. Ask someone whose child has been harassed or bullied. Ask someone who has been a target of verbal abuse because of their sexual orientation.
As a society, we’ve gotten past the outmoded idea that “sticks and stones may break my bones, but names will never hurt me.” It’s patently untrue. How we name things reflects our willingness, as a community, not only to “tolerate” otherness, but to strive to understand and accept those we think of as different.
Speaking with compassion is the first step in the long journey to equality. Often, it’s the subtle shifts in our ways of speaking that signal more seismic shifts toward inclusivity. Yet, when it comes to mental health problems and illnesses, we are behind the times. This is especially true in cases of serious or severe mental illness, which can manifest in behaviours that make us feel uncomfortable — or even, in the rarest and most extreme examples, appalled.
The distinction that’s missing when stigmatizing language is directed at people living with mental illness is the one between the individual and the illness. It goes missing when we hurl pejorative terms. But when we do so, we also strip away the humanity that binds communities together. We create a chasm between “us” and “them,” an illusory sense of security built on nothing more than false ideas.
We can’t inoculate ourselves from mental illness by casting stones from glass houses. What can help is drawing on the humility of “But for the grace of God go I.” Such compassion doesn’t require belief in a higher power, and we can only call our society civilized by embracing empathy for its most vulnerable and marginalized members.
My intention isn’t to cast aspersions. I don’t want to name-call or single out any person for this kind of behaviour — the fact is, it’s pervasive. So it’s up to all of us to look squarely in the mirror and confront our own biases.
When we denigrate those who are ill and incapable of defending themselves, we expose our own worst traits: fear, weakness, ignorance. Using more careful language, on the other hand, language that makes space for compassion, is to honour our shared experience.
To quote George Orwell, “If thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought.” By banishing stigmatizing language, we’re not only elevating public discourse, we’re creating a more just, inclusive, and hopeful society.
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Louise Bradley, president and CEO of the Mental Health Commission of Canada (MHCC), was in a hotel room in Vancouver when she got an unexpected call.
“The last thing I was anticipating was to hear that I had been appointed as a member of the Order of Canada,” explained Bradley. “I asked the caller if I could take down her name and number so I’d have proof this really happened!” she laughed.
Indeed, it was really happening, and on July 27, Bradley and 83 fellow inductees were named to the nation’s highest civilian honour.
“Imagine,” reflected Bradley, shortly after the public announcement, “here I am, a person of very humble beginnings who was bounced around foster homes as a child, and told I wouldn’t amount to much, receiving this kind of recognition for my work. It’s both tremendously validating and incredibly humbling.”
While Bradley was bowled over by the news, the many friends and colleagues she has worked with over the years expressed confirmation that she has earned every ounce of this recognition.
“This is a tremendous honour and one that is much deserved,” wrote Carole Lambie, president and CEO of the Waypoint Centre for Mental Health Care, in her congratulatory letter to Bradley. “We look forward to your continued advocacy for improved funding for mental health across all levels of government and for making greater access an important priority for the mental health system.”
The MHCC’s board chair, Chuck Bruce, agrees. “I’ve known Louise since the commission’s inception in 2006, and I have watched her lead this organization with a clear-eyed focus on recovery-oriented care, a conviction for improving psychological safety in workplaces, and an unflagging commitment to raising the red flag about the suicide crisis in this country.”
Michel Rodrigue, MHCC vice-president of organizational performance and public affairs, notes that Bradley’s achievements aren’t motivated by what’s popular or expedient. “She doesn’t lead according to trends or bow to the flavour of the month. She’s truly compelled to act as someone who knows the mental health system inside and out, both as a senior leader and as a consumer of services.”
At heart, it’s Bradley’s courage in sharing her own lived experience, and her willingness to be a powerful, yet vulnerable voice in the space, that has injected her advocacy with credibility and resonance.
“About five years ago, I decided it was time to pull back the curtain,” she said. “I’d always spoken openly about my passion for mental health as a professional, but I’d drawn a line in the sand around my personal life. I realized if I was going to really be authentic, I needed to own my experiences.”
Bradley took her work in mental health, and coupled it with her own lived experience, weaving compelling narratives for audiences of health-care providers, CEOs, and even on the world stage at the OECD. Soon, she was disclosing the harrowing experiences of her early home life in Newfoundland, followed by the devastating suicide of her best friend while Bradley was in graduate school.
“Being this exposed was terrifying, to be honest. I’d always been very careful to present myself as this unruffled executive. But as I quickly discovered, no one wants to hear from someone they can’t relate to . . . and the fact is, everyone can relate to experiencing a mental health problem.”
Bruce agrees. “Louise truly leads by example. Her professional achievements are well documented. She’s got a growing list of accolades and honorary degrees. But these only tell part of the story. What they can’t illuminate is her kindness, her compassion, and her commitment to servant leadership. With all her accomplishments, Louise has never lost sight of her roots, and she is always willing to make herself vulnerable so others may draw strength.”
“And that,” concludes Rodrigue, “is why none of us were surprised when Louise got that call in Vancouver: there is no one more deserving. The MHCC family — our board directors, executive leadership, staff, and advisory members — could not be more proud.”
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MHCC to examine impacts of cannabis use on mental health, post-legalization
Over the next five years, the Mental Health Commission of Canada (MHCC) will help close the research gap on the potential harms and benefits of cannabis use on mental health, providing a foundation for future policy decisions. Budget 2018 allocated $10 million over five years for this work.
“Our initial review of the literature has found that the illegal status of cannabis, which limited how a study could be done and what data could be collected, has left us with critical knowledge gaps about cannabis use and its impact on mental health,” said Ed Mantler, Vice President of Programs and Priorities at the MHCC. Cannabis use will become legal and regulated in Canada as of October 17, 2018.
The negative impacts of cannabis use on mental health outcomes, the potential therapeutic benefits of cannabis and cannabinoids, the influence of mental health problems and illnesses on patterns of cannabis use, and the experiences and needs of diverse populations who live with cannabis use disorder and/or a mental illness are not well understood. The MHCC is well positioned to engage a diversity of Canadians including youth, emerging adults and seniors as well as LGBTQ2+, Indigenous, immigrant, refugee, ethnocultural and racialized populations.
Canada has one of the highest cannabis consumption rates in the world, with more than 40 per cent of Canadians reporting they had used it at least once in their lifetime. Fifty-four per cent of youth in Canada report using cannabis before grade 12.
Since April 2018, the MHCC has held over 30 consultations and formed key partnerships to direct and help execute its work. These efforts build on previous work undertaken by experts and key organizations such as the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) and the Canadian Centre on Substance Use and Addiction (CCSA), including workshops that identified priority areas for cannabis research.
The MHCC will undertake more than 15 short- and long-term research projects to strengthen the evidence base around cannabis, including multi-year community-based research intiatives. This work dovetails with and advances CIHR’s Integrated Cannabis Research Strategy. Knowledge exchange and mobilization activities will ensure this new evidence is widely shared.
The first research projects will be selected through a funding opportunity for urgent priority areas in cannabis launched by CIHR in partnership with the MHCC and CCSA. The maximum amount per grant is $125,000 for up to one year with $750,000 set aside to fund applications relevant to cannabis and mental health. These catalyst grants are meant to build research capacity and inform the development of future, larger scale research projects.
These short-term projects are just the beginning. A further round of consultations to inform longer-term research projects, including community-based initiatives, will be undertaken in the fall and winter of 2018-2019.
“As the second country to legalize cannabis, we have an opportunity to be global research leaders. We will only succeed in this by creating a unified approach which merges the MHCC’s research incubation and policy know-how with the expertise of key partners in the field, including CIHR, CCSA, members of the Canadian Research Initiative in Substance Misuse, the Public Health Agency of Canada and the Canadian Institute for Health Information,” said Mantler.