{"id":36314,"date":"2025-05-16T11:17:29","date_gmt":"2025-05-16T15:17:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=36314"},"modified":"2025-05-16T11:17:31","modified_gmt":"2025-05-16T15:17:31","slug":"chambers-b-o-l-d-summit-raises-tough-questions-on-mental-health-month","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/chambers-b-o-l-d-summit-raises-tough-questions-on-mental-health-month\/","title":{"rendered":"Chamber\u2019s B.O.L.D summit raises tough questions on Mental Health Month"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Fresh out of university, Rebecca Shields took on the role of Director of Development for the Greater Vancouver Food Bank.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was situated in a part of the city that, she says, is \u201cthe most open drug-using community in Canada\u201d but, on the flipside, is \u201cknown as the friendliest place in the world.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tasked with raising money for the cause, she encountered one woman every week who had clearly spent time living on the streets.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One day, however, the same woman came in carrying two cans of baby formula.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The food bank, as it happened, changed the woman\u2019s life for the better and she came back to help pay it forward for other community members in need.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cShe said to me, \u2018If the food bank hadn\u2019t been there for me when I was a new mom, I would never have survived for my baby, and I never want another mother to experience that,\u2019\u201d Shields recalls. \u201cI learned dignity at that moment; I learned that it doesn\u2019t matter where you come from in life, you can make the world less of a hell for the person coming behind.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was a chance encounter that changed the trajectory of Shields\u2019 life, one that led her to her current role as CEO of the Canadian Mental Health Association of York Region and South Simcoe, an organization that has had an indelible impact on the communities it serves.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Shields was among six female leaders in our community who came together on Thursday morning for the Aurora Chamber of Commerce\u2019s annual Women\u2019s Summit, which was held at the Royal Venetian Mansion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The theme of this year\u2019s summit was BOLD \u2013 Believe It, Own It, Love It, Do It \u2013 and the Chamber brought together an impressive array of speakers who live up to the theme.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Among the speakers were entrepreneurs Zuly Matallana, founder and owner of TIARA; Andrea DeGasperis-Ronco, Principal of Opus Homes; Janis Showers of The Car Girls; and fittingly for Mental Health Awareness Month, entrepreneur and mental health advocate Cherry Rose Tan, Serena Thompson, founder of Aurora\u2019s Lighthouse Learning & Development Centre, and Shields.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fresh off celebrating the tenth anniversary of the CMHA-YRSS\u2019 mobile mental health unit \u2013 MOBYSS \u2013 in Bradford earlier in the week, Shields focused on her role of being a communicator in an often-challenging health field.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe treat youth as young as twelve all the way up to people who are in their elder years, and one thing I have learned is that it\u2019s not the illness itself, it\u2019s the stigma attached to it, and that makes it so hard to recover,\u201d she said. \u201cIt\u2019s so pervasive and\u2026the reason we know that a lot of people don\u2019t access the care they need, but it\u2019s also the reason people don\u2019t understand that they need to access the care that they need.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Underscoring the issue of stigma, she shared a story of a friend who was reluctant to share that he lived with anxiety and panic attacks, despite the fact she was working in the mental health field by that point. It highlighted just how much work was needed to break down stigma like this and, most importantly, find a cure for mental illness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Finding a cure, she stressed, is not just a dream \u2013 very real progress is being made to better address and treat mental health, including a focus on neuroplasticity, the long-term impacts of brain injury, and the development of Rapid Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (RTMS) as a treatment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThirty-five years ago, if you had a child with paediatric cancer, the mortality rate was over 95 per cent,\u201d she said. \u201cIt was devastating, and government, doctors, researchers, hospitals, care donors, rallied. Do you know that today, if you have a child with paediatric cancer, the mortality rate is less than two per cent? [In] July 2024, less than a year ago, the second cure by the World Health Organization was announced for HIV and AIDS. Just stop and think about that: the most stigmatized virus in the world. Millions of people are dying because of it, and now USAID has been cancelled, now we can\u2019t even provide life-saving medication.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIf we could get that cure, we wouldn\u2019t have to worry about USAID anymore, and we can save lives all across the continent of Africa. If they can do it for such a stigmatized disease, why are we not doing this for mental illness?… It\u2019s actually possible.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A local solution that will go a long way for people living with mental health challenges will be the completion of York Region\u2019s first community-led mental health community care centre in Newmarket \u2013 \u201cI wanted to call it the mental health and addiction crisis centre\u2026and then we had to, for zoning reasons, call it the \u2018community care centre\u2019 \u2013 we\u2019ll talk about stigma later, but that will be a circular conversation,\u201d said Shields.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Created for individuals aged 12 and up, it\u2019s intended to be an alternative to visiting the emergency room. It will have 20 stabilization and withdrawal management beds, walk-in services for those in crisis, and more.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe have a single goal for that centre: what needs to change so that somebody\u2019s first mental health crisis will be their last? We are building and we\u2019re inviting everyone in the community to answer the question: what needs to change so that somebody\u2019s first mental health crisis is their last? We have over 20 partners, we are working with police, we are working with paramedics, we are working with primary care, we\u2019re working with the school boards, and we want to work with the Chamber [to] understand, for all of us, what needs to be changed?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIf you have a loved one that is in crisis, what do you want to know before you even walk in the door? Instead of actually triaging and treating, our job is going to be to de-escalate that crisis and connect you on to the right next level of care. Whether you\u2019re 12-years-old, and then go back to school\u2026 how do we integrate you back into school and university? We\u2019re working with Southlake and all of the hospitals, and we need to work together.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe bring applied solutions in order to solve real-world problems together to those root causes, because if you just say, \u2018Okay, here\u2019s medication,\u2019 we haven\u2019t solved the root cause of why somebody\u2019s in there in the first place and you\u2019re going to be in that cycle of crisis\u2026. I need you to come and tell me what needs to change. We\u2019re trying to connect with as many diverse communities as we can \u2013 and [we] can\u2019t do it alone.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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

Fresh out of university, Rebecca Shields took on the role of Director of Development for the Greater Vancouver Food Bank. It was situated in a part of the city that, she says, is \u201cthe most open drug-using community in Canada\u201d but, on the flipside, is \u201cknown as the friendliest place in the world.\u201d Tasked with […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":36310,"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-36314","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\/05\/2025-05-15-07.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-9rI","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-04-23 15:45:31","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\/36314","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=36314"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36314\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":36315,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36314\/revisions\/36315"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/36310"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36314"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36314"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36314"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}