When discussing bullying, our minds often jump to Pink Shirt Day and “zero-tolerance policies” that have continued to develop over the last few decades. Bullying is often labelled as negative behaviour, encompassing “malicious” or “mean” characteristics.

Although the experience of the pandemic increased rates of mental health significantly, it also made mental health a household word. It slowly became socially acceptable to talk about stress, mental health, zoom fatigue and impairments of functioning because it seemed that no one was immune and there was both a sense of shared suffering and perhaps even the development of both compassion for self as well as others.

Did you flinch when you read the title of this blog post? I often get the sense from others that the emotional expression of professionals in the workplace is taboo. This intrigues me. When I ask around, the most common thoughts about this is that there are limitations to staff emotions in the workplace. Wherever, whenever and however emotions are expressed, we have ideas about levels of appropriateness. Pairing labels of ‘limiting’ and ‘appropriateness’ with emotions raises further questions for me.

 When ‘mental illness’ is mentioned there are many reactions in society as to what this means. Invariably the conversation that ensues, if at all, can be often characterized as awkward, unsure, confusing and many other words that place mental illness in a category that continues to be not well understood.

September 10 is World Suicide Prevention Day. This year’s theme is ‘Creating Hope Through Action’. To empower people to take action to prevent suicide, our Crisis Counselling Team at Eastside Community Mental Health Services has written the following blog post on how to help someone at risk of suicide. If you or someone you care about needs help, call 403-299-9699.

We recently recognized Mental Health Week and Child and Youth Mental Health Day this month, and we can’t think of a better thing to talk about than how youth can be part of the solution to improving our systems of support and intervention. Recently, we’ve been fortunate to have had the opportunity to work together with an incredible group of graduate students and youth co-researchers (all co-authors on this blog post) to consider approaches to clinical work with youth.

The goal of Psychology Month is to raise awareness of the role that psychology plays in our lives, our schools, our communities and our employment. It provides a good opportunity for public education and promotion of the profession. Mental health professionals come in all shapes and sizes. At Wood’s Homes, treatment and support teams include a range of interdisciplinary professionals – social workers, psychologists, counsellors, youth and family counsellors, pediatricians, psychiatrists, nurses, occupational therapists, creative arts therapists and on and on.

As our new year began, there were a lot of grumblings about how the clock was moving forward but we were all still locked in time. Sayings like, ‘2022 = 2020, too’, were both true and a little demoralizing. I have written before that Blue Monday isn’t real, but if you are feeling a little less excited about 2022, I think that it is worth talking about. 

As the latest variant Omicron looms large over our festive season, we are all facing difficult decisions about trust and about social gatherings, which is heavily layered in conversations about vaccination.  Don’t worry, this isn’t a blog about getting vaccinated, but rather one that looks at the complicated relationships we have with our friends, family and ultimately news sources and government about who or what we trust when it comes to our safety. 

One of the glories of living with teenagers is the interesting conversations you can have around the holiday table. Last year, it was all about the morality of telling kids that there is a Santa Claus when (spoiler alert) there isn’t one.  It started with one of the oldest declaring that her future children would not be told that Santa is real, because “that’s just a huge lie”.  This was of course followed by the other kids talking about what they used to believe and how it felt to find out.