The Canadian Mental Health Association is helping bring a new approach to respond to mental health emergencies in BC. It was announced late last year that 12 Peer Assisted Care Teams, or PACT for short, are coming to the province. The teams are made up of one mental health professional, and one peer with lived […]

Program Chair Shannon Dames provides an update on Vancouver Island University’s Psychedelic Assisted Therapy program, which welcomed its first cohort in September 2022 for a one year term.

Dr. Melanie Badali, registered psychologist and member of Anxiety Canada’s scientific advisory committee, discusses panic attacks and panic disorder. The discussion covers what a panic attack is, how common they are, what you could do if you experience one, and how you can help if someone you know is going through one.

Most people are likely familiar with the idea of the poverty line, as in the phrase “living below the poverty line.” How do we figure out where that line is? Canada’s official measure of poverty is the Market Basket Measure. To learn more about how we conceptualize and track poverty in Canada, People First Radio’s […]

Six years ago Vancouver Island Mental Health Society’s Boundary Supportive Housing opened its doors in Nanaimo. What exactly is supportive housing? And what’s the relationship like between the housing and the surrounding community? To find out, People First Radio’s Joe Pugh paid a visit to the building, and spoke with Janet Rowley and Camille Eade, […]

Nanaimo MLA Sheila Malcolmson is British Columbia’s new minister for Social Development and Poverty Reduction. Malcolmson had previously been the province’s minister for Mental Health and Addictions. She joined People First Radio to speak about the tasks outlined in her mandate letter, and what changes within a ministry when a new minister takes over.   […]

Coverage of a new supervised consumption site opening in Nanaimo at the corner of Albert and Dunsmuir streets. Excerpts from a November 21 Nanaimo City Council meeting at which councilors questioned Ann Livingston on matters related to the overdose prevention site on Nicol street run by the Nanaimo Area Network of Drug Users. Ann Livingston, […]

Each province and territory in Canada has recognized one program or individual within its borders with an Award for Innovation in Mental Health and Addictions Care. People First Radio presents a series of conversations with a number of the recipients from across Canada. The Kainai Nation, also known as The Blood Tribe It’s the largest […]

With Canada’s National Housing Strategy hitting the halfway point of its ten year term, People First Radio featured a pair of conversations exploring the strategy’s progress thus far. One of those conversations was with Jacqueline Gahagan, Associate Vice President of Research at Mount Saint Vincent University, in Halifax, Nova Scotia. Gahagan’s background is in health […]

In 2017 the government of Canada launched a ten year National Housing Strategy, with the goal of reducing chronic homelessness by 50 per cent and removing over half a million families from housing need. We’re now five years into that plan. Ren Thomas is an associate professor at Dalhousie University who researches housing policy. She’s […]