Author: Amber St. Louis

Using person-first language to make an important distinction

It’s easy to make assumptions about people based on their academic accomplishments, professional successes, or philanthropic contributions. But sometimes if you pull back the curtain, you discover untold depths and hardships that reveal a more valuable story than a five-sentence biography can.

Dr. Manon Charbonneau remembers the day vividly, though she’d rather forget it.
“So that’s it, then — cancer,” she recalls saying in disbelief with her eyes locked on the digital images of her mammogram. The radiologist confirmed the diagnosis, and in a moment her world was “completely dismantled.”

“I’m so glad you’re Black.”
That’s the first thing Donna Richards hears from her new client. But as one of the few African, Caribbean, and Black (ACB) clinicians working in the client’s Employee Assistance Program (EAP) — and one of the few ACB psychotherapists in Canada — she hears it a lot.

Long before the pandemic, the need to support the mental health of young people was evident. With 50 per cent of all mental health problems established by age 14, the formative years of our youth are some of the most vulnerable.

The Working Mind First Responders offers police a new kind of protection.

Firefighter Steve Jones on the merits of The Working Mind First Responders course.

For Pauline Meunier, a paramedic of 26 years, it took a trip to the allergist to give her anxiety a name.

“What I thought were allergic reactions turned out to be panic attacks,” she said. “Before I was asked about anxiety, it never occurred to me that my mental health could be the problem.”

New MHCC resource aims to support women sidelined from the workforce