I grew up surrounded by a family of storm enthusiasts on the east coast of Canada, where I developed a fluency in the threat of tropical storms, hurricanes, and winter storms. Each weather system evolved according to its own unique before, during, and after. For me, each event was a coupling of fascination and fear, […] More »

Ashwin Mehra’s mother had COVID-19 in Mumbai. In Toronto, he wasn’t sleeping well. Before the diagnosis, even the thought of Mehra’s parents falling sick in India with him stranded in Toronto would keep him up at night. If they died, he knew he wouldn’t be able to attend their funerals. And so, when his sister […] More »

When Krista Dale was 11 years old, she awoke from a sleepwalking episode to find her stepfather on the couch next to her. “He was trying to have sex with me,” she remembers, 18 years after the incident. “I freaked out.” She ran to the bathroom, locked herself in, and began yelling for her mother, […] More »

For the first time in the history of Canadian mental health, in 2017, the federal government announced an investment of $5 billion to improve access to nationwide services. The lump sum, which is part of the government’s Health Accord with the provinces and territories, is slated to roll out over the next 10 years. Mental […] More »

I am quite open about the fact that I have Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, or OCD. Talking about it comes easy to me. More difficult to handle are the reactions I get from others. “So are you like that nerd on The Big Bang Theory?” someone in a work meeting recently joked after I mentioned my […] More »

On a rainy Thursday in April, I arrive at a yellow brick, split-level house in London, Ont. People are doing word searches at a large dining table. Some help themselves to a container of freshly baked peanut butter cookies, and CBC News is playing on a television in the living room. This house, tucked away in […] More »

As a child, Tim Johnson was sexually abused by multiple adults. Brief therapy sessions then didn’t help him. “I wasn’t ready for it,” says Johnson, who’s now a paramedic in York Region, Ont. As an adult, memories of his abuse started creeping back until he hit rock bottom. “One day I left work with the […] More »

For more than half my life, someone has been trying to kill me. That someone is me. The first time I considered ending my life, I was eight or nine years old, living in a rented house with my father and brother in Owen Sound, Ont. My mother had moved out years earlier, after my […] More »

The new issue of People magazine has both celebrity chef Anthony Bourdain and fashion designer Kate Spade on its cover. Sadly, the magazine is the only weekly tabloid to give both stars the cover treatment, with other magazines featuring only Bourdain. When Spade and Bourdain died by suicide, just days apart, tributes and tweets celebrated the […] More »

Poetry isn’t a vocation associated with typical career paths, but even so, Toronto-based poet Sabrina Benaim’s journey has been unusually meteoric. In 2014, she performed a poem called Explaining My Depression to My Mother at the National Poetry Slam in Oakland, California. “Mom, my depression is a shapeshifter,” she begins in the video that has […] More »

Years ago, walking through downtown Ottawa made Amanda Rocheleau anxious. As a social worker at The Ottawa Mission, one of the city’s largest homeless shelters, she knew almost every homeless person by name, and they knew hers. She listened to their stories every day—of childhood abuse, neglect, struggles with addiction and mental disorders. It didn’t […] More »