Tuesday Morning Links
This and that for your Tuesday reading. – Yves Engler discusses the importance of a “social wage” – and how the minimum standard of living we’re prepared to tolerate affects…
mental health
Friday Kingston mental health workers to highlight volatile situation brought on by cuts
The formal recommendations around addressing the challenges of mental health always seem to get it right. So why is it that we never get beyond the nice words from politicians…
Coming out as the end of a beginning
This morning on CTV’s Canada AM Kevin Newman, of Question Period fame, was promoting a very important segment on this weekend’s W5 program (Saturday at 7 p.m. ET) and, in…
Don’t We All Hear Voices? A Mindfulness-Informed View of Schizophrenia and the “Normal” Mind
The hallmark of schizophrenia is perceiving things that are not there. Auditory hallucinations, including “hearing voices”, is particularly common. What if this clinically distinguishing feature of schizophrenia differs from the…
The Grad School Gospels – Part 3: Academe Can’t Be Your Everything
The Grad School Gospels is a series of posts inspired by Dirk Hayhurst‘s The Bullpen Gospels. In the Bullpen Gospels, Hayhurst tells stories from his struggle to self-actualize through professional…
This New Year’s, Resolve to Stop Chasing Happiness
Many wisdom traditions encourage a path or process orientation rather than a destination or product orientation to living well. Happiness makes for a poor goal. It’s not particularly well-defined. What…
The Grad School Gospels – Part 2: Passion, Fear and Indifference
In The Grad School Gospels: On Professional Baseball, Academia, and My Shared Experience with Dirk Hayhurst, I juxtaposed Hayhurst‘s pro baseball journey – which he recounts in his first book,…
Trans Depathologization: the spark of change.
I watch a lot of news stories unfold, reading left-wing, centrist and right-wing media alike. In the course of a news story, issues ignite, blaze hotly and then smoulder into…
The lowdown on substance use
Last night I attended a free session at our local mental health facility. It was called Getting the Low Down on Substance Use, and was presented by Michael Coughlin, a…
Mental Health CEOs outliers when it comes to executive pay
What is it about being a CEO of a psychiatric hospital in Ontario that warrants much greater compensation than executives of similar-sized general hospitals? Last month we took a look…
Briefs: Women with mental illness disproportionaley more likely to end up in jail
Women with mental illness are disproportionately more likely to find jail than health care help according to the associate chief of psychiatry at the Royal Ottawa Health Care Group. Speaking…
Canadians Put Politics Aside for Suicide Prevention Day
by Amelia Wood Whether you identify yourself as a conservative, liberal or something in between, there’s no denying the fact that you or someone you know has likely been affected…
There are at least a few, if not many, important people with whom I need to have my own conversation about…
…this! It’s certainly not too early to think about Mental Illness Awareness Week When I read the Ottawa Citizen article (linked above) I immediately thought, “Mom will have read that…
Oh look! It’s happened again!
I’m delighted to be at the top of the list, perhaps it’s random, of 16 Five Star Rated AIDS Information Sites & Blogs – and I’ve found a few fellow…
Ottawa Citizen outs mentally ill man
On Saturday the Ottawa Citizen ran a story called Pleas to help mentally ill son ignored, mother says. It was in Hugh Adami’s column, The Public Citizen. Complete with names…
Wednesday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – John Conway discusses the Cons’ project of destroying Canada’s social safety net. – But the good news is that Stephen Harper is running…
Keeping the Demons at Bay
Yesterday, I wrote about those disaster scenarios that have a way of poisoning our imaginations. Today, I’ve been thinking about some strategies that I use to keep the demons at…
For those who loved Kyle
I’ve been wrestling all day – less with what to write than how to write it – so I thought I’d begin with an absurd fruit-plate. Leading with humour is…
Immigration Bill C31: Auschwitz Survivor Wiesel Confronts Harper
“I feel morally compelled to remain on the side of other uprooted men and women everywhere. Today, as yesterday, a nation is judged by its attitude towards refugees.” The sobering…