This is Canadian Mental Health Association Week (May 6-12, 2019)
“Mental health is a state of well-being, and we all have it. We might have a mental illness, and we might not. Either way, we can all feel well. We can all have good mental health. It is about having a sense of purpose, strong relationships, feeling connected to our communities, knowing who we are, coping with stress and enjoying life. And it’s never too early or too late to get there. But it’s not just about what you do for yourself, by yourself—everyone needs healthy and supportive places to work, live and learn.”
Do you know the difference between Mental Illness and Mental Wellness?
A mental illness refers to a diagnosed clinical condition that leads to a psychological or behavioural pattern that causes distress not expected as part of normal functioning.
Mental health (wellness) refers to our emotional state of wellbeing. More than the mere absence of mental illness, it refers to healthy functioning and happiness. Everyone has mental health and it exists on a spectrum that changes.
More than 6.7 million people in Canada (20%) live with mental illness. Of these, more than one million are children and adolescents between the ages of nine and nineteen. (stat from Mental Health Commission of Canada)
What can we do as a community to ensure High River has great mental health?
How do we make an effort to check-in with eachother?
How do we work collectively to break the stigmas surrounding mental illness?
I don’t want to make it sound like its too simple…but how about we just start having conversations about it? There is all kinds of research around the effectiveness of being more connected. We have some awesome resources available to us and ways to connect…but together we need to share info with eachother too.
We have (to name a few):
- Community Cafe
- The Library
- The Foothills Children’s Wellness Network
- Foothills Community Counselling
- FCSS
- The Friendship Centre
- The Rec Plex
- The Handi-Bus
- and the How’s Your 5? tool!
Get your thinking caps on….send us an email with your thoughts and ideas of the above questions in bold – ourhighriver@gmail.com.
I will share our collective conversation about this next week and let’s just get started together!