COPMI Launches Video Series For Youth

COPMI: Children of Parents with a Mental Illness.

COPMI is an online Australian mental health information resource for children, teens and parents. Recently COPMI has launched a brand new video series for youth living with a parent experiencing mental illness. These videos provide a wide range of information based on specific illnesses, treatments, coping strategies and much more.

These videos aim to be both educational and engaging for youth and so they are filmed with youth who have experienced similar struggles.

http://www.copmi.net.au/kids-young-people/about-mental-illness

BC-Based Anxiety App: MindShift

MindShift is a joint effort by Anxiety BC and a non-profit public awareness organization.

This app aims to reduce anxiety in the user's life by instilling an awareness of one's thoughts via Cognitive Behavioural Therapy. MindShift also provides the user with educational tools, mood and anxiety tracking, relaxation tools, quick tips and inspirational quotes.

As a part of British Columbia's ever-growing mental health initiatives, MindShift is an excellent free tool for loved ones coping with anxiety. Because smartphones are an integral part of many people's lives, this app is a coping tool that's just a swipe away.

Mindshift is available on both Android and Apple devices.

#WeAreAcceptance

"The world is filled with people who couldn't care less. Be the person who could care more."  - Anonymous

I want to be that person.  I want FAME to be that organization.  Those words stuck to me like two sided duct tape when I first heard them in the opening address at the NAMI 2015 Conference last week in San Francisco. They resonated through my brain like an echo chamber.

The messages were loud and clear.  For four days we listened, learned, shared, talked, networked and snatched up programming ideas.  All of it done with a view to being the organization that could care more.  To be the organization that would find better ways to support families, to look for new, fresh and innovative ideas that would families would embrace with hope and understanding.

Looking back over those days spent in San Francisco I think what I came to realize while listening to Keynote Speaker and Mental Health Advocate, Hakeem Rahim, was that for us to truly be able to succeed in recovery, we must first enter in to the journey of acceptance.  Until we have that we will never truly begin to be able to stamp out the stigma that is associated to mental health, mental illness or mental wellness.  At the end of his address he asked conference participants to use the hash tag #IAmAcceptance.  I looked over at my associate, board co-chair, Cindy Woodcock and said "that is FAME....except for us it will be #WeAreAcceptance"