Guest Episode
June 09, 2023
Episode 122:
Men's Mental Health & Key Resources
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Dr. John Ogrodniczuk is a Professor of Psychiatry and Director of the Psychotherapy Program at the University of British Columbia.
Dr. Ogrodniczuk launched Heads Up Guys in 2015, an online resource that supports men in their fight against depression by providing tips, tools, information about professional services, and stories of success.
Today we will talk about men's mental health and key resources.
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welcome to the true Hope cast podcast where we take a deep dive into mental Health's many physiological and
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psychological aspects this is the show for you if you're looking for motivation inspiration knowledge and solutions and
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that's what we are all about here at true hope Canada and true hope Canada is a mind and body based supplement company
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dedicated first and foremost to promoting brain and body Health through non-invasive nutritional means for more
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information about us you can visit truehopecanada.com today on the podcast though I welcome back professor of
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Psychiatry and director of the Psychotherapy program at the University of British Columbia Dr John agrodnichak
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and Dr John launched a organization called Heads Up Guys in 2015 which is an
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online resource that supports men in their fight against depression by providing them tools tips and
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information about Professional Services and success stories today though we're going to be talking about men's mental
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health and those Key Resources enjoy the show Dr John welcome that's a true podcast how are you what's going well
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I'm doing great so I'm in uh life's going well it's busy but well awesome
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well just as an intro if you had we've had you on the show before um I'm not sure what episode it was but I'll make sure there's legs in there
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because we really dive deep into the specifics around the birth of heads up guys it's an amazing organization but
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can you give us a heads up just an idea about who you are and what it is that you do sure I'm a professor of
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Psychiatry here at the University of British Columbia and uh I'm also the founder of heads up guys and this is a
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leading Global resource that supports men with depression and from all over
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the world as a size with set you off there and
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everyone is playing golf and funnily enough I was playing indoor golf with a bunch of buddies because we all needed to blow off steam part of your mental
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health right and then Heads Up Guys comes on to Sports Center which is just amazing so like can you tell us a little
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bit more like like what the resources like really doing for those guys and how
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you're actually able to capture that audience who are clearly like struggling and searching for
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answers yeah it's a pretty comprehensive resource we try to do a number of things one we try to educate the public about
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what depression and suicide actually is so that mental health literacy piece is a real big part of what we do uh
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including helping guys go through a self-check this is a screening tool for
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depression to let guys help guys get a better gauge of where their mental health is at and give them prompts about
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reaching out to others depending on you know where you know where their score is coming in at and uh that aspect I just
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said about reaching out that's another big thing encouraging help seeking and this is help seeking in the broadest
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sense whether that's connecting with friends and family Anonymous healthlines or family doc mental professionals we
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liken it to building your team and that's a really big part for guys because so many guys have this idea that
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if they reach reach out for help they're losing control they're losing control of their health their life to sign a
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failure a weakness and it's the absolute opposite it's a sign of strength and taking control of your health what are
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some of the main ways that people are actually finding the site though what's the main is there a typical Pathway to
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the landing page the two biggest pathways are organic searches like on Google so if you're
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searching you type stuff in the box that's relevant to what we do we come up
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in the search list people click that link and they come to us about half the people come by way of an organic search
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paid searches are also a really important way for people to get out so
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we'll put our ad on Google and if somebody again is searching something but rather in a search result our ad
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comes up they come that way and interestingly we actually get quite High engagement through that particular
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mechanism so when people come to the site they're they really engage in the site and then other places or other
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mechanisms by which people come it'll be workplaces having heads up guys as a
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formal resource Word of Mouth media we get a lot of media attention as
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well so if we're mentioning a story in the news whether it's print radio TV
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people search for us after so there's a lot of different ways people do come you mentioned like some Search terms are
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there any anything like specific obviously with um I mean is it like I'm looking for help with my mental
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health because it's very delicate the the wording that would go into like a search engine you know like playing
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around with the with the analytics of things like that it's like the the wording needs to be quite specific that
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especially from the heads up guys perspective when you're doing ads you also need to capture that audience are there any specific like Search terms
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that are like at the top of the list actually when you take out so heads up guys is
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becoming more and more well known so people are searching directly for heads up guys if you take those out of the
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equation the top Search terms have to do with some aspect of suicidality whether
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somebody is got a guy in their life that they're trying to support they're concerned with you know my boyfriend is
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suicidal that's what people actually type or somebody's struggling with
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suicidality on their own and it's like people type in I want to die how to stop
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thinking about suicide these kinds of things so those are actually the the Search terms that bring the most people
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to the site and then similar kinds of uh search phrases people use like my
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husband is depressed or something like this so a lot of it is kind of a second
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party uh support people that are looking for some guidance support and help of
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their own about how to engage with and support an important man in their life because that's really important because
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it can you can so I think people like like whether it's Partners or it's
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family members or close friends you can see the change in personality quite
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quickly with an individual especially somebody who is maybe like a lot more
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extroverted and then and then reverts into like more of an introverted isolated type of Personality like that's
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a big character shift for somebody who previously wasn't like that and it can
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be difficult for somebody to like directly approach that person about like what's going on for them some people
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have that relationship where they can do that I think it might be interesting with with like a guy on a guy in a
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relationship like maybe it's a bit easier for us to call not call people out but like be a bit more open with
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that type of thing um but maybe if it's not super close friendly you're concerned of that that's
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a really tricky thing to do if you've got a resource and didn't really think about it from the perspective of I've
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got a friend of mine or a family member who's like struggle in how much are they struggling and is there like some of these tests these
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things that you have on your website these would you call them quizzes or tests yeah we call it a self check and
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then yeah so you can use some of these tools and you'd be able to you know from your information and your understanding
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about individual put that in there and get some sort of score and get a little bit more of a analytical answer of like
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why they might be behaving where they are yeah you're right uh trying to have that
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conversation is difficult so on the website we actually have information for people about how to have that
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conversation you mean mention changes in behavior and that's a really critical thing because if you approach a guy that
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you might be concerned about regardless of what your relationship is like and you say I think you're depressed very
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often that's not going to go anywhere and it's not going to go well but if you say hey Simon you don't see me your
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normal self lately is something going on and then you might use some of these behavioral changes that you've observed
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to sort of give some examples yeah normally you're
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really outgoing and jovial and and you've seem to retreat it and you're really quiet and you've kind of just
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kind of fallen into this space where you've shut everyone out and you know
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I'm really concerned you know it's it's something going on and so just something
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like that so you're not accusing somebody of something you're you're sharing some observations you're sharing
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concern and care and you're going to have much more success doing that than
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saying hey you know I think you're depressed you need to go see somebody that just gets a guy's back up and he's
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probably not going to respond well to that is that like a designation or a psychiatric
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categorization for that type of questioning rather than like you use either depressed or whether something's
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a bit more like direct and splashy well it's really just empathic
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communication you know you have somebody in your life whether it's a colleague a husband a brother and you're concerned
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and you want to communicate that concern in a way that shows empathy and
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compassion respect and so if you approach it from that perspective that's
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going to be received a lot better from from a guy than if you just kind of a really explicit and to direct
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would you have any recommendations for like female partners and how they might communicate that would that be it on a
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very similar it's yeah it's exactly the same and in fact uh very often it is a female partner who is reaching out so
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you we were talking about Search terms before those Search terms are off and from the perspective of a female my
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husband my boyfriend my partner absolutely it's genius that's really cool yeah how has how have you seen Heads Up Guys
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evolve and obviously you get quite a lot of data coming to the website right that you're able to analyze it and see
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patterns which is obviously super valuable to evolve the whole program the whole project how have you seen the
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pandemic in the last three years affect those patterns like traffic just got
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like gone through the roof like what what have you seen well traffic when covet first started it
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actually went down a lot and it wasn't just us it was anything that wasn't covert related went down because people
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didn't know what the hell this was and but over time you know people started to
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appreciate and understand that a lot of the mechanisms that were put in place to
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mitigate the spread of the virus were having some unintended negative consequences on our health you know we
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are social Animals by our nature we need people in our lives we need interpersonal connection and when we're
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when we are deprived of those opportunities that's really going to be
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difficult for a lot of us and so people started talking more about that
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conversations and discussion about the mental health impacts of covid were you
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know Common discourse in the media and so people started really thinking and
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and and talking a lot about either mental health in general their own mental health sharing and men were part
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of this and and certainly over the past three years we've seen a big uptick in
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men reaching out for help absolutely and I think in parallel with
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that is that the utilization of technology to deliver Services has
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actually helped too because rather than you know my practice being completely in
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person now it was all online and it made it a lot more accessible so I had guys
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call me from their garage their truck their basement going out for a walk a
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little cubby on a construction site and I can guarantee it none of these guys are going to be stepping through that
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door to come and see me so that accessibility that ease of connection with a help provider really helped as
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well and so even in my own practice although it was for a very long time
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orientated toward men it's been exclusively men the last three years
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it's just so many more men now reaching out is that what are some of the psychological aspects of of it being a
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lot easier for men to jump online from that basement or their truck and towards you rather than coming in and coming
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through the door well I think there's the pragmatic aspect it's just easier for them you know they don't have to
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drive they don't have to find parking pay for parking whatever and so there's that that practical element but also the
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confidentiality and privacy it's like I can do this anywhere that I feel
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comfortable and for a lot of guys uh coming into a more formal office setting
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it's not really comfortable for them and that that setting is is
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it kind of anxiety arousing for a lot of them and it's like what is this about you know what are the rituals that are
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in place here there's other people in the waiting room what are they going to be thinking of me although they're here
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for the same reason but these are the concerns that a lot of guys have and so if they can reach out to me by email and
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we have a session by Zoom nobody needs to know and they can do it like I said wherever they're comfortable and and can
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really see it in a lot of man and it's like for them it also helps them exercise some control over how they
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engage with that help yes men aren't you really taught that vulnerability is
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something that we can exhibit with any type of security so obviously they're
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coming into like I just think about like so many people I've seen in movies also in my in my own life like people who
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like go to like marriage counseling for example but it's always seem to always be the wife who really really wants to go and do it and there's there's so so
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much reluctance from the male perspective because we don't have maybe the same relationship with that
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vulnerability piece yeah and um yeah I mean that's just an app like I'll try to think of some positives that have come
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out of like of coded but the fact that you're at like the the remote working
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situation being able to have remote therapy sessions or whatever that might be is super is normal now it's much more
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accessible and obviously like I'm sure like clinics that you work in that you've worked in they've tailored to be
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able to do that for people and you're able to help a lot more people in regards in regards to that as well yeah yeah and
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I think you know it speaks to the importance of tailoring our services to
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meet men's needs and and help them feel comfortable engaging with that help rather than saying well this is how we
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do it you know suck it up and get on with it and it's like okay what do you
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need what's going to help you feel comfortable and help you become engaged
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and stay engaged with that help and so I think from a service provider perspective we need to be a lot more
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flexible and responsive to really make it work for men you've touched you touched on a couple of bits in regards
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to like a covet response and how they're obviously unforeseen psychological
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Mayhem that happened because of that are there any big lessons that we can
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take from like what happened what governments all around the world see to
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do like in the really big lessons we can take from that from like a psychiatric standpoint well I think the big lesson
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is don't deprive people of social connectivity I think that is perhaps the most crucial thing is that we as I said
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before we need people in our lives it's such an important thing
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I I think some of the other aspects is that when you do confine people and we
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we have data and anecdotal evidence as well a lot of men are in difficult relationships
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and when you when the government say you've got to stay home you can't leave
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and yeah if you're in a tough relationship that
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makes things so much more worse and one of the things that we found we we asked
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men about uh difficult domestic situations and ask them whether they had
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perpetrated partner abuse in some way or whether they have been victims
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themselves and a very high proportion of men were victims themselves and that's
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not something guys talk about at all so it was really important to get some
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insight into that other aspects of the pandemic that we
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learned about is that it was a very polarizing experience people have
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different perspectives on a multitude of factors that were all related to it and
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having empathy and compassion for one another's perspectives rather than
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becoming entrenched in one point of view and seeing others as wrong if they don't
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hold your same point of view that just creates such Discord in society and so I
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think if we can be more open-minded and accepting of differing viewpoints you
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know I'm talking about a Pollyanna world right now it makes everything better but I think it really is important for all
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of us to be able to take a step back to be able to receive a perspective that
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doesn't necessarily align with ours and give it some space just as we hope that
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they do for us yeah I think being aware of your own biasis is one of the most powerful things that you can do
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recognizing that I think a lot of people lost good friends lost family members over opinions yeah you know that they're
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even like governments and health organizations couldn't really agree on so quite remarkable circumstances and
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yeah if you in the future to lock people up and those individuals that use drugs
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use alcohol who are you know dependent on all of these things like that just like goes through the roof and then I
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think about like the kids who are involved in like domestic abuse and partners involved in their land and
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they're locking people down and not having the the more transparency that you're able like I can see maybe a somebody's
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Partners like not doing too good and like you can see the patterns in the kids as well like all of that like it's
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Shadow behind doors oh yeah well the knock-on effects of our mental health not being well or huge here it it
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doesn't just affect us as individuals if we're struggling it impacts everyone that's part of our life in one way or
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another and that's really important for us to be mindful of and and men in particular because men you know an
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important positive aspect of masculinity is that a lot of men see themselves
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being a good man taking care of others well if you want to sort of embody that
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to the fullest if you will being your best version so that you're there for
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others when you're struggling say hey it's not just me I need to do this for
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it's for the other good people in my life well the masculinity piece is an interesting topic because like there's
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so much talk about like being too masculine or toxic masculinity and like
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that's not like an okay thing to to do or to exhibit do you have any opinions
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on that well I think like anything in life too much of a good thing can be bad
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and so to say you know there's an aspect of masculinity that's toxic I don't
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think that's the right narrative we ought to be talking about it I don't know you know what that really means no
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I don't really know what it means but let's take the self-reliance as one
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aspect so a lot of men an important aspect of their identity as a strong
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competent man is to be self-reliant and to a certain point that's actually true
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for every single one of us as human beings we need self-reliance we need to
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be able to exercise control an agency in our life to be able to feel competent doing things on our own but take into an
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extreme you can see how detrimental that could be if I'm struggling but I'm
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embracing this attitude no I got to do it on me on my own it got to be self-reliant I'm going to deny myself
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the opportunity to connect with important sources of of support and help and
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unfortunately too many guys do Embrace this attitude and it takes them down a very dark path where they feel they must
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do it on their own they get worse they're and worse and worse to the point
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where they're in a very dark place and they start thinking about not being here
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as the only Escape it's pretty scary stuff yeah so we're on
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campus right now we're at UBC how have you seen the last couple of years and the students like young people with
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their with their mental health like how have you seen that evolve I mean how long have you been working as an
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educator it'll be 26 years okay that's a long time yep and that's so 26 years
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have you seen like patterns with it have you seen have you seen things change and especially the last few years yeah uh
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one of the evolving patterns that I've seen uh changed is that students seem a
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lot more absorbed in themselves like I see it every day on campus now people
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walking around rather than engaging with one another acknowledging with one another with an
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eye gaze a smile a subtle hellos people are looking in their uh iPhones they'll
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have headphones on and just be disconnected from their surroundings people not moving out of the way of one
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another other if they're coming along I know it sounds like a simple thing but it it's reflective of people just not
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being aware that they're part of something bigger they're just in themselves and the pandemic had a real
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detrimental of uh impact on all of our Lives young people got hit really hard
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it's such a formative time of life you know emerging young adulthood finding
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out who you are making an important new relationships in your life and they were
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denied those opportunities and loneliness was already a very serious issue amongst young adults on campuses
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across our country before covert and after it just accentuated to a level
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that was really really bad and students are still struggling with it because as
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I said they miss those opportunities to form connections and even though things are back in person a lot of them still
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feel very isolated and you may say say well there's 40 000 of them on campus how can they feel isolated well a lot of
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them do they feel really terribly alone yeah I think that just just the idea of
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um yeah having headphones in stuck on the phone and obviously these people these young people are still developing
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right and our senses develop especially like our senses to protect ourselves and
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be aware of why not get hit by a bus or something right these these are very important parts of our development as
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adults as human beings and yeah like that I think you can probably go back to maybe like 11 12 even 13 years of age
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where you can't see these social isolated behaviors people are literally
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living in their kind of their own little bubble and I see people running with headphones on like on streets and I'm like you get hit by a car that's kind of
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on you it's quite bizarre um but yeah I feel like that's um really
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stopping that they're really important developmental stage in people and also you're talking about like a very key age
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in life where you've like maybe left home or you'll know you are you're not going to school anymore you're going to
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like a university it's much bigger it's different a lot more personal responsibility on you and it's kind of
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really the only real right of passage that we have in like Western culture that is kind of I
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don't know I think we're like really missing a big part of that like separation between all that bridge
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between being a kid and then becoming an adult yeah I totally agree and and a big
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part of that transition as I was saying earlier is forming relationships we
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actually all want to feel like we matter to others but we actually have a responsibility to help facilitate that
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and if we disconnect ourselves from others either by
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choosing to stay in our dorm room and attend a class on Zoom rather than going
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in person going for a walk and being absorbed in our phone or on on our headphones rather
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than paying attention to people and if we're not delivering those subtle
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acknowledgments of others with a hello or an eye gaze and Nod we're not going
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to be getting it either and that kind of messaging if we do pay attention to it it's like oh well no one seems to really
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care about me but you also have to care about others too yeah it ends up being
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being around people as I've been the abnormal situation yeah it's just really dangerous yeah
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how has the school adopted any like specific policies in regards to this I
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mean it seems like a serious problem it's like this student isolation is there like been any like initiatives like put forward to support it I mean
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obviously part of um the university college experience is going to be like initiatives to get
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people together because everyone's kind of like new I suppose it's not like that fresher stage but if you've seen like a
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like a response in this school or any other schools in regards to attempting to
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get get students together for their mental health was like the primary initiative not really no okay that's a
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shame yeah it is okay it's a short answer that's cool that's cool
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um in regards to heads up guys I think it's 2015 it
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launched right yep how has it really evolved I mean we spoke I saw it on SportsCenter I believe it was discussed
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in Parliament like a year ago and someone sent me a video about that I don't I don't even know if you're aware of that yeah yeah okay
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okay so like how is that how is the how has it evolved you know like seven eight years later like coming on well it's
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been growing year after year and you know we're a Canadian resource and we
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originally thought we'd just be a Canadian resource at best um but there's a dearth of services and
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resources available to men who are struggling with depression and suicidality not only in Canada but
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globally really and uh because of that more and more people from across the
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globe have been finding Heads Up Guys sharing it and and utilizing our
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resource and we see year after you're people coming from
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many many different countries we're an English language only resource so that
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is a limiting aspect but say India for example India is more English speakers
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than Canada does right so we we get a lot of traffic from there in fact the countries with the three uh biggest uh
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traffic drivers if you will United States United Kingdom and Canada so
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we're really feeling a need for for men globally and you know I would say
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we we do a good job at doing it but we we can't do it all I I wish we could
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Inspire others to to either join what we're doing develop a complimentary
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service or a resource so that there's more for men out there I I feel a big
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responsibility to to do our job and do it well and we try really hard but there's also this frustrating aspect we
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know we can do more we know we should do more but there's a limit to what we're
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actually able to achieve is that the language changing options within the website like if I am if I only speak
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French for example is that an option no not within the resource itself we just we don't have the funds to be able to do
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that because it's one thing to be able to change the language on the of the
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text and the self-check and stuff right yeah yeah and I tell people just just
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use Chrome or Safari it's got a English or a
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language translation function which seems to work rather well but a big part of delivery in our resource is a
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utilization of social media to engage with the public and you need you need people to be able to do that on a daily
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basis like that that's actually a big job and if we don't have money to hire somebody who who can do that from a
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French perspective or a German perspective whatever it is we just can't develop or deliver our resource in full
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in another language Government funding I wish it was there well is it as it
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grows and it gets bigger and it becomes maybe a little bit more mainstream and you know I'm sure that you you'll be
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able to maybe comp compile data to be able to put forward to potentially get something like that and that seems like
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a next big step well we we have the data we have a lot of data I would argue we
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were probably the most well-researched uh Mental Health Resource out there
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period that's big that's a big plan like we we have a lot of data and and it's
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not all about heads up guys and what it does we do research about the people we
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serve men with depression men are struggling with suicide to understand what they need so that we can tailor our
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resource to better serve their needs yeah and so we we have that data it's
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just that it's been well impossible to this point getting uh government support
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to deliver a resource so that's why we rely on the public so much you know it's
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a hundred percent funded by donations from the public which is huge and yeah big shout out to those people that do
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support them yeah support it what do you think the next 10 years what does it look like
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well I have a lot of grand Ambitions tell me about the place yeah one of the things that I really would like us to do
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and we're we're starting to move in this direction already if you think about Service delivery and
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uh you know on the one end of the spectrum there is just pure self-help
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people looking after themselves on the other is engagement with mental health
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professionals but there's a big space in between these two poles of the spectrum
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there's honestly probably never going to be enough professional help to serve the need right and so we need to develop
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capacity in other ways and one of those ways is peer support
31:38
and so if we can help educate the public you know help improve mental health
31:43
literacy address stigma address issues around uh help seeking and so say you're
31:51
struggling and I've been trained if you will to be attuned to these issues how
31:57
to have conversations around topics of uh mental health and mental illness and
32:04
if I am aware of resources in my local community you can approach me we can
32:10
have that conversation I can be by your side and help you get connected that's
32:15
that's peer support really at its core element and so if we can develop capacity in that way we're going to do a
32:22
much better job in helping people get the help that they need when they need it yeah it sounds like I think of like
32:29
tribal communities and like a medicine man like there'll be this one person that would you would kind of go to and
32:34
then you would pass that knowledge down but having one person maybe within the family that is is versed in this
32:40
information and you could pass that down and you could like learn it together and then it goes out to like the
32:46
neighborhoods and the communities that would be awesome do you think I'd like that's some sort of like course that people could could take yeah that's
32:53
exactly what we want to do we want to develop that course an online course
32:58
people could come and they'd do it and you know we have you know Barbers you
33:04
know guys will talk there or they go see a massage therapist their physiotherapist if if we could help up
33:11
skill people in the community that hold these different rules so when they hear things
33:17
in their conversations with men they can pick up on it and they know how to approach a conversation to help those
33:24
red men and right now that capacity is not really there but it's totally doable
33:30
we don't really have anything like that within like our society as a whole right but it sounds so obvious it sounds I don't say
33:38
simple but I suppose once the once the infrastructure is in there and the people who want to do it are up for it
33:44
it sounds like a super super simple way to get a lot of really
33:49
detailed information to those people who are able to serve um do we have anything like that within
33:56
like our like modern culture really like because we're not are we really educating children
34:02
about like mental health and what emotions like really are and tools to be able to do that I'm sure some schools
34:08
are doing that like but on the on the mass scale it's not really happening I don't think no it's not and you're right
34:15
you know there are initiatives within schools that are trying to make those important changes and and that's a great
34:22
thing but it needs to be done on a more uh systematic uh broad scale way uh
34:28
there's other things like mental health first aid and so that's a program that exists to kind of do what we're talking
34:35
about it was originally developed to be uh more around Crisis Intervention when
34:42
people are in a state of Crisis how to respond to that but it's broadened out more so it's good but there's a big cost
34:48
actually taking the training and it's very very time consuming as well and
34:55
both of those factors are going to serve as barriers to people so we want to
35:00
simplify that and we want to make it free available so if anybody wants to do it it's there and you know I think
35:08
that's a really important part is having it be free like the rest of our resource
35:14
you know you're talking more of like a prevention though aren't you like it's it's great that we have people available
35:20
like in an emergency situation but like you want to be able to have these these resources these people able to
35:26
communicate to people as a prevention to way before it gets to the point where people are looking to like you know kill
35:31
themselves and you know maybe use drugs or other substances for years and years
35:36
and then you know it gets to a real downward spiral or people in like a real bit of trouble like that's that prevention piece is obviously where we
35:43
want to be going yeah yeah I couldn't agree more and we want to be able to be
35:49
responsive in a crisis situation but we want to avoid getting there in the first place of course yeah
35:54
well Dr John thank you so much for your time today can you just remind us where we can get connected with heads up guys
36:01
and if the people are looking to you know take a self a self-check or find
36:06
some other resources within it where do they go sure they go to headsupguys.org and it's a pretty easy
36:13
website to navigate you come to the home page and if you're curious about the self-check we've got an access point
36:20
right from the get-go when you come to our site it's got loads of information
36:25
encourage people to to get familiar with it and whether it's for themselves or
36:30
others the more you're familiar with it the better sort of armed you'll be to be able to share it and utilize it when the
36:39
need comes and um you know I think that's a big part is that sharing aspect because somebody may
36:46
say well I'm doing fine why do I need it maybe you don't maybe you never will but I can guarantee you at some point
36:52
there'll be somebody in your life who will need it and so if you're armed with
36:58
that knowledge of this helpful resource you'll be able to respond better to that person when that situation arises
37:05
amazing well I'm glad you got so much passion for this project and it's evolved so beautifully and it's reaching
37:11
people all over the world not just within Canada and I'm sure it's going to do amazing things in the future but thanks for coming back on the show John
37:16
yeah thanks Simon I appreciate it awesome well that is it for this episode of True hopecast official podcast of
37:22
true hope Canada I'll leave links in the show notes below so you can connect with anything that we've spoken about today
37:27
but that's it for this week we'll see you soon
37:32
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