{"id":35847,"date":"2025-02-13T15:54:46","date_gmt":"2025-02-13T20:54:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=35847"},"modified":"2025-02-13T15:54:50","modified_gmt":"2025-02-13T20:54:50","slug":"mental-health-leaders-celebrate-half-century-as-difference-makers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/mental-health-leaders-celebrate-half-century-as-difference-makers\/","title":{"rendered":"Mental health leaders celebrate half-century as difference-makers"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

As we mark twenty-five years into a new century, Kim Lewis marks time through a slightly different lens.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As the Senior Director of Services for Regional Programs for the Canadian Mental Health Association of York Region and South Simcoe (CMHA-YRSS), she laughs as she says she began her work on local mental health programs in a \u201cwhole other millennium.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She and Lisa Wood, the CMHA-YRSS\u2019 Youth Programs Coordinator are marking significant milestones this year, celebrating an impressive 25 years each dedicated to addressing mental health in the communities they call home \u2013 and, after a collective half-century with the CMHA-YRSS, they\u2019re focused firmly on the future.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhen you look back, it\u2019s amazing to be here for this long and see the impact that we have had and the work that we have done within the community, to see our programs grow and thrive, and to see the impact we\u2019ve had with our clients,\u201d said Wood at the organization\u2019s Aurora headquarters last week.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI think, as kids, we were always kind of helping others in the community as a family or doing things for other organizations and I think that is where the seed was planted for me, just seeing the work that we do here, the amount of people that we help, and I just think it\u2019s a gift for people to help others. Having that one-on-one conversation and seeing people make meaningful changes has had a real positive impact on me.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When Lewis, a resident of Georgina, joined the team, they were an agency of just 18, talking about how they can be an information resource for the community and \u201cnot necessarily as big in service delivery.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cOver the years, to see the agency grow by leaps and bounds has been pretty phenomenal for me,\u201d said Lewis. \u201cTo be a part of that growth has been really exciting, especially in the real, innovative community development that the CMHA has been involved in and supporting people in York Region and South Simcoe.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Growing up, Lewis recalls a time when mental health was an issue rarely talked about \u2013 and, if the subject was ever brought up, it was almost always discussed behind closed doors. This helped guide her in the direction of social work and social services, she said, and fight for a renewed focus on mental health.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe need never goes away for help,\u201d agrees Wood, an Aurora resident. \u201cIt\u2019s important for us to be there for them and to support them as they go along their journey in mental health and see them recover. I think there is a lot of stress and anxiety out there and a lot of it has to do with social media, expectations\u2026the world has changed so much that I think it is important to be there.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Indeed, the demand for service is ever-growing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The growth of both demand \u2013 and the need \u2013 within the communities they serve only underscored for the CMHA-YRSS that they need to think \u201cdifferently and innovatively\u201d to be, as Lewis said, \u201cable to provide people the right type of care at the right time, and really looking at breaking down waitlists for services when people need it the most.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cLike some of the other changes we\u2019ve seen is a growing number of individuals who are surviving homelessness and the fact that things are unaffordable,\u201d she continues. \u201cFood is unaffordable, rent is unaffordable, and it\u2019s really coming together as a community of healthcare professionals to support people who are surviving homelessness and that is something I have seen us doing really well over the last little while \u2013 and not just CMHA, but with our community partners.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As they look ahead to the next five, 10, 20, and 25 years, these dedicated care providers are anticipating a \u201ccoordinated system where there\u2019s the right type of care at the right time and place\u201d to address the mental health needs of the community.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cHopefully people will have more access to our programs and more availability and just being there for people for when they need us at that point in time,\u201d said Wood.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Added Lewis: \u201cI think continuing to remove that stigma around mental illness is something we focus on every day and removing barriers to service. If we understand there is a wait list for service, how do we do things differently to be able to support people differently? It\u2019s really exciting to think about access to care. I wish I could flash forward and see five years from now.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One certainty on the horizon within the next five years is the completion of a new York Region Mental Health Hub in Newmarket, which has been a long-held ambition for the CMHA-YRSS.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The mission of the Hub is to ensure someone\u2019s first crisis is their last crisis, bringing that coordinated system into fruition.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And, after 25 years with the organization, they are waiting for doors \u2013 and a brand-new chapter \u2013 to open with great anticipation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cFor me, it\u2019s about helping to reduce the stigma towards mental health,\u201d said Wood. \u201cThere are so many assumptions that people have about people with mental illness and I think being a part of that de-stigmatization; what people think about others is important and just to be there for folks as they go through their own journey, and that is what\u2019s kept me going, as well as awesome colleagues! To think about where we started 25 years ago, we were a much smaller organization, and we\u2019ve grown with the changes as we have gone along with society, and seeing it going for another 25 years is going to be pretty awesome.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Added Lewis: \u201cI love to come into programs and to be present, just to see what is going on, to reconnect with people who are using services that I haven\u2019t seen in a long time, and it\u2019s really impactful to hear people say how much they value the services and supports they receive. I think that\u2019s what keeps me going: hearing people\u2019s testimonies about our journeys.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By Brock Weir<\/strong><\/p>\n\r\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As we mark twenty-five years into a new century, Kim Lewis marks time through a slightly different lens. As the Senior Director of Services for Regional Programs for the Canadian Mental Health Association of York Region and South Simcoe (CMHA-YRSS), she laughs as she says she began her work on local mental health programs in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":35848,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-35847","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general_news","category-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/02\/2025-03-13-04.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-9kb","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-04-22 22:32:46","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35847","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35847"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35847\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":35849,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35847\/revisions\/35849"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35848"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35847"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35847"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35847"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}