Category: Advocacy, Policy, Public Health

Upcoming Motivational Interviewing Training

Frances Jasiura and Cristine Urquhart from Change Talk Associates presented at PAN’s mental health training in the Spring. They are offering Motivational Skills Coaching in Vancouver in October and November, 2012.   Please click on the link for the complete information: MI-Skills-Coaching-Poster1 Who Should Attend? Helping professionals who have taken an introductory level training in Motivational… Read more »

Mental Health Training Survey Results

Thanks to everyone who completed the on-line mental health survey over the past several weeks. Your input was very helpful in determining the most relevant and timely topics to further develop. Given that our resources are limited, we wanted to prioritize the topics that you’ve identified over the past several years as topic areas in… Read more »

Mental Health Training Survey

Hi folks, A BIG thanks to the people who have completed the Mental Health Training Survey! Your feedback is very important and helpful in prioritizing the topics that PAN will develop in future. If you haven’t done so, please do complete this online survey – it only takes about 3 minutes! We will close the survey on… Read more »

CBC Interviews Joe Average on Photography

Joe Average is exploring photography as a new medium that helps him deal with the challenges of living with HIV. In this CBC interview, aired August 30, 2012, Average discusses why he laid down his paintbrushes and how photography has emerged as a new creative means to explore and engage the world. In doing so, he… Read more »

Here to Help is a website that provides mental health and substance use issues. Here’s a link to the site where people living with mental health and substance use issues share their stories. My Stories     Questions or comments?  Please email: [email protected] Carlene Dingwall (BA, M.Ed, PhD Candidate) Mental Health, Substance Use and HIV/HCV Initiative 

Gabor Maté has been walking the streets of Downtown Eastside Vancouver providing care to people who are often living in circumstances of severe addiction. Over the years, he has become one of Canada’s leading thinkers on trauma and addictions. In this, he draws on various knowledge systems as he seeks to understand the causes of human suffering and… Read more »

This is Peter A. Levine’s latest work on trauma. Levine hold doctorates in both medical biology and is the founder of “Somatic Experiencing”. He draws on his broad experiences as a clinician, brain researcher, stress scientist, and as a keen observer of the naturalistic animal world to explain the nature and transformation of trauma in the body, brain and… Read more »

Reflections on Trauma

Hi folks, I am just back from a National Aboriginal Health Research Conference and Summer School on Indigenous mental health, held in Montreal. It was my good fortune to meet some of the leaders in the field and discuss where we are at in the research community regarding our growing understanding of trauma and the… Read more »

A Must See: CBC’s “8th Fire”

There’s a new series on CBC called 8th Fire. 8TH Fire draws from an Anishinaabe prophecy that declares now is the time for Aboriginal peoples and the settler community to come together and build the ‘8th Fire’ of justice and harmony It is a four-part series that documents and discusses the relationship between Aboriginal people and Canadians. Written,… Read more »

Changing Directions, Changing Lives

This is the title of Canada’s first-ever national strategy on mental health and it brings me lots of hope. Years in the making, it was officially launched on May 8, 2012. The title tells us it is time to move forward. The strategy issues a challenge to build on existing strengths, AND to change the… Read more »

This is a fantastic presentation from the 2012 Ontario Harm Reduction Conference presented by Allison Potts, Concurrent Disorders System Integration Lead at the Mental Health and Pinewood Centre Program of Lakeridge Health.  The presentation focusses on the interation between substance use and mental health and the consequences of service providers working in “silos”. Download presentation… Read more »