Mental Health
During my decades-long career in psychiatry, medicine and science, I used best available evidence-based information and listening carefully to understand the needs of people I served to direct my work. Now, in my role as a parliamentarian, I take the same approach to help inform my decision making in the legislative process.
Since my appointment to the Senate, I have advocated for improved mental health and scientific literacy nationally and for better access to rapid and effective mental health care for those who need it. By improving scientific and mental health literacy in our population, we can better understand the actions we can take to improve our own health and how to create better mental health care for all Canadians.
This page contains useful and trustworthy information that you, your family and friends can use. Please feel free to employ it for your needs and share widely.
Please note that this website does not provide any treatment or services and can only guide visitors to trusted resources. If you require immediate medical attention, please call 911.
Mental Health Literacy Toolkit
To best care for our mental health and for the mental health of those around us, we must first have mental health literacy. In 2023, Dr. Brendan Hanley and I worked with mentalhealthliteracy.org and Professer Yifeng Wei at the University of Alberta to create toolkits specifically for MPs, Senators, and MPPs to help initiate and inform conversations between parliamentarians, staff, and Canadians.
These toolkits were made in an effort to provide the best-available, evidence-based information and resources for parliamentarians and their staff. Each resource in this toolkit can be accessed by QR code or by links under the QR codes.
Mental Health Handbook
In Summer 2021, MP Ya'ara Saks and I worked with Alberta Health Services to create a mental health handbook for parliamentarians, their staff and parliamentary administration. This was an initiative of the Cross Parliament Mental Health Caucus.
The handbook includes practical and important information about mental health for employers and employees. It is applicable in both personal and professional life, and covers topics including defining and understanding mental health, how to obtain and maintain good mental health, stress management, red flags and several pages of resources.
Op-eds about Mental Health
Mental Health Resources
