Around a decade ago Zakia Moulaoui Guery was working in a job where she’d get to know the stories of people who’d experienced homelessness. She realized that people in her life outside work were interested in hearing those stories as well, but that they didn’t have any awareness or exposure to them. Moulaoui Guery wanted […]

Singing and songwriting have helped Parksville-Qualicum’s Amarii express things he’s struggled to talk about. Now, they’ve also helped him sign with a new label, Kolossal Records. Amarii says he remembers falling in love with music sitting in front of the television watching Much Music Videos at age 12, but that he only started making music […]

Ten months after being shot in the line of duty and having her leg amputated in 1998, Laurie White was able to return to full unrestricted duties with the RCMP. When she was first asked to share her story, White says she wasn’t sure what people would want to know, but she quickly realized the […]

Gillian Kolla has been looking into the impact the drug toxicity crisis is having on people working to respond to overdose. “While people really, really find doing harm reduction work and doing service provision for people who use drugs to be valuable and rewarding work, it has been emotionally devastating as the drug toxicity crisis […]

Eight years after British Columbia declared a public health emergency due to a significant increase in drug-related overdoses and deaths, Moms Stop The Harm co-founder Leslie McBain wants people to continue to remember the human impact of the situation. “The deaths are piling up and they are people, they’re not just a number,” she said. […]

A group of Ontario school boards have filed a lawsuit against the operators of Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, and Tik Tok. The boards claim that social media products, which they say are designed for compulsive use, have impacted the way children think, behave, and learn. They say that they are bearing the brunt of what they […]

When Nisha Patel went through her medical records, including psychiatric records from visits to hospital and her university health clinic, the feeling spurred her to make art. “It really started this this anger within me,” she said. “These were all very personal experiences for me. But for the system, they were just yet another form […]

In conversation with Rory Kumala, CEO of the Vancouver Island Construction Association, on the organization’s Tailgate Toolkit program, which is designed to provide education and training on issues regarding substance use, mental health, and pain management. In addition to providing resources for workers, Kumala says addressing these issues with employers is part of the path […]

Gurleen Kaur of The University of Alberta speaks about her experience with psychosis. “Often people will read in textbooks, or papers…that psychosis is this break in reality,” she said. ” It doesn’t quite capture what it means to me, based on my experience.” Kaur said psychosis can cause her to see faces, which in the […]

Looking at how our brains are depicted onscreen with Heather and Sarah Taylor. The Canadian sisters work in the film industry, and explore depictions of mental illness, disability, and a variety of other topics on their podcast Braaains. Heather Taylor says often times shows can treat mental illness like a “problem of the week”. “I […]