change therapy

the following is a press release from vancouver’s north shore schizophrenia society.  since no-one seems to have picked it up yet, i’m publishing it here.  it addresses the important question of when involuntary admission for serious mental illness is applicable, and the involvement of family members. vancouver coastal, in a review of the death by [...]

[Read more →]

i am still intrigued by the question of the relationship between work, mental health and peace. it is interesting that this relationship is hardly ever explored, not even the relationship between the workplace and peace. however, here and there i find a little nugget. one of them is giving peace a chance: organizational leadership, empowerment, [...]

[Read more →]

on tuesday i had the honour of hosting the #mhsm (mental health and social media) chat. that’s a weekly one-hour conversation about mental health on twitter. the topic we discussed was mental health and addictions. it was very lively, and perhaps the biggest topic was self medication, a topic that sprung up within the first [...]

[Read more →]

tomorrow night at 6pm PST I will be hosting the weekly #mhsm chat on twitter. #mhsm stands for mental health and social media. #mhsm was started by amy kiel, an ardent mental health activist. the topic of the chat will be mental health and addiction. #mhsm typically uses between 5 and 8 questions to stimulate [...]

[Read more →]

in my long-suffering attempts to organize my internet life better, i’m going to see what it’s like if i post the occasional link article.  so here’s a stroll through the links open on august 1, with the first paragraph of each post so that you can get an idea what it’s all about.  you may [...]

[Read more →]

this morning i went to michael schratter’s sendoff on his year-long ride don’t hide bicycle tour around the world to create awareness about mental health. let’s just stop here for a moment and picture this. and then let’s put a finger on how long this is. three hundred sixty five days. eight thousand seven hundred [...]

[Read more →]

are you in vancouver and looking for something to do on saturday? how about going to salmon insanity, run by gallery gachet apropos their mad pride events. gallery gachet is a collective of vancouver artists who have been affected by mental illness. i like how they make the connection between mental health and ecological health. [...]

[Read more →]

here’s another report from mental health camp. for some reason, i just can’t bring myself to get all official about it and write it from the point of view of the organizer, so i’ll write it from my personal point of view. so here are a few fragments, which do not do justice to the [...]

[Read more →]

i was going to write this nice first recap about mental health camp but then – well, life happened.  so instead here are the links to some people who have written a little about it.  enjoy! http://katanaville.com/mental-health-camp-at-ubc-honesty-on-the-internet/ http://www.covenanthousebc.org/blog/2010/07/16/mental-health-camp-recap http://theemperorhasnotoque.blogspot.com/2010/07/mental-health-camp-2010-my-view-after.html http://cuntinglinguist.com/2010/07/mental-health-in-which-steff-calls-a-spade-a-spade.html http://www.kidsideration.ca/?p=86 http://www.ridedonthide.com/2010/07/mental-health-camp-2010/

[Read more →]

my talk at mental health camp yesterday: it’s not about mental illness. it’s about mental health. in 1996, 510 murders occurred in canada. taking a prevalence rate of about 3% of violent crimes committed by people with mental illness, at the most, 16 of these people were killed by someone with a mental illness. i’m [...]

[Read more →]

these are my opening remarks for mental health camp today. if you’re on twitter, you can follow the conference via the hashtag #mhcyvr10. this is a conference that was conceived and organized in love, excitement and harmony. while we talk about stigma and silence, what is much more interesting to us is to move forward [...]

[Read more →]

today you may want to amble over to brainblogger, where i’ve posted an article apropos mental health camp.  the post, social media and mental health, discusses some of the difficulties associated with the intersection between mental health and social media such as internet addiction, insomnia, etc.

[Read more →]

the following is a transcript of an email conversation with harold mayo, a mental health advocate from florida. harold is critical of talk of stigma in relationship with mental illness. this criticism arose in connection with the press release for mental health camp.  in the following you will see that in the exchange, i directed [...]

[Read more →]

earlier this week, our newspapers were full of the tragic story of clare shelswell, the little girl who was killed by her stepfather, peter wilson. on june 29, the vancouver sun devoted half of page 1 and 2 to it. on page 2, there was also an article that contained an interview with an expert [...]

[Read more →]

with over 1,000 blog posts, my memory of what has been written here is getting a bit fuzzy. to remedy that, i thought that once in a while i’d write a post about old posts. these here are reader comments on the topic of depression from looong ago: it’s hard to get past the stigma. [...]

[Read more →]