When Promoting Arson Can Be A Good Thing....

Hey all -

A cousin of mine sent this link to me a week or two ago and I just got around to reading it tonight.  This blog is written by a guy we both went to high school with.  I didn't know the guy, but I remember him - musician, really creative, really outgoing, positive - not the guy you'd figure would get depression, right?  Anyway, his blog is really well written, and provides a different perspective on depression than I have.

http://www.orgcode.com/2012/01/05/when-the-world-seems-like-a-cold-place-it-may-be-time-to-kindle-more-fires/

Enjoy!

Let's Talk v 2.0

The return of Bell's Let's Talk campaign was announced on Monday, and I just saw my first commercial for it tonight, with Clara Hughes.  Ok, I wasn't with Clara Hughes when I saw it, she's the spokesperson for the campaign.

Bell has committed $50 million over five years to work towards changing Canadians' attitudes towards mental illness.  Last year, the Let's Talk campaign raised $3.3 million (Bell donated 5 cents for every long-distance call & text) from its customers.  This year, it's adding a twist and donating for Twitter re-tweets of the message that will be posted from the @Bell_LetsTalk account.

Here's the Let's Talk page:

http://letstalk.bell.ca/

And here's the link to the press release for this year's campaign:

http://letstalk.bell.ca/resources/media/sections/media/press/BLTD_campaign_en.pdf

So on February 8, if you're a Bell customer, call someone far away.  Send a text.  Or two.  Or three.  And if you've got a Twitter account, retweet the message they put out.

Minding Your Mind

Hey all, just thought I'd share another program that's aiming to do some good in the mental health field.  I stumbled on this one during the Flyers/Senators game on Rogers Sportsnet East today.  The coaching & training staffs of both team are wearing purple buttons with "Minding Your Mind" on them.

So I Googled the Minding Your Mind program.  Here's their website:  http://www.mindingyourmind.org/

I checked them out - It's primarily geared towards youth and young adults (high school & university ages) but it has some good information and quite a few links to outside resources as well.  Definitely worth checking out.

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Again, there's no shame in having a mental illness - like I said in an earlier post, it's not like you choose to get one.   You don't choose to get cancer, you don't choose to pick up any other disease, and yet people will freely talk about them.  So why is there such a stigma related to mental illness?  Beats me.  It doesn't make any sense.  Maybe it's because we can't see it, can't X-ray it, can't biopsy it....who knows?  Stats suggest that between 20-25% of people will suffer mental illness.  You'd think there'd be more discussion about it.....

Think about that.

Or better yet,  talk about it.