10 Tips for Mental Health

The CMHA provides many resources ranging from extensive programming to basic online healthy living tips. The importance of making small changes should never be underestimated. The tips below can help bring balance, well being and happiness to your everyday life.

1) Build Confidence - Identify your abilities, build on them and do rhe best you can with what you have

2) Eat Right, Keep Fit - A balanced diet goes a long way with helping reduce stress

3) Make Time For Family and Friends - Don't take these relationships for granted

4) Give And Accept Support - Relationships thrive when they are 'put to the test'

5) Create A Meaningful Budget - Over spending causes stress, identify needs versus wants

6) Volunteer - Being involved gives a sense of satisfaction and well being that paid work can't provide

7) Manage Stress - Learn to identify and manage stressors

8) Find Strength In Numbers - Share your problems with others, it will help you feel less isolated

9) Identify And Deal With Moods - Find safe and constructive ways to deal with and feel emotions

10) Learn To Be At Peace With Yourself - Get to know who you are, what makes you happy and accept what you cannot change

Give these tips a try - who knows, a small change could make a big difference!

Meeting the Business Crowd

Last week, CMHA VB staff and volunteers headed to downtown Vancouver to do a little one-on-one mental health promotion. We handed out over 1000 stress-test cards that contain work-life balance tips on the back.

I'll admit, some people wouldn't even look at us as the rushed by and some people politely declined our free information. But more people accepted our cards with a smile. Given that we handed them all out in less than 20 minutes, I'd say they were a big hit. We're hoping that as people take them back to their office they will share them with their co-workers or take them home and share them with family and friends.

Sometimes, it just take a gentle reminder, to encourage people to re-focus on balance, wellness and self-care.

Huge thanks to all our volunteers who made this Mental Health Week event a great success.

Click here to view our top tips and feel free to let us know if there are tips you use that we can share with others.

Mental Health Week: May 4 to 10, 2009

Gregor Robertson, Mayor of Vancouver, will be officially proclaiming Mental Health Week in Vancouver today at 2 p.m. in the Council Chambers at City Hall. It's a rainy Vancouver spring day, but we're hoping a great many will come out to show support for mental health awareness!

Mental Health Week is about awareness, not only of issues around mental health, such as stigma and myths, but also awareness of how mental health, just like physical health, affects all people. Mental health is everyday health for everybody.

This year, CMHA's theme for Mental Health Week is "Now, More Than Ever, Invest In Yourself." With all the stressors in our lives, whether they be financial, familial, work or health-related, and so on, it is important to take care of your mental health. It's one of our greatest assets. The CMHA National web-site offers a few tools to see if your life is in balance, and tips to help you mind your mental health. Mental health is also about being proactive, about recognizing problems and seeking health before things become overwhelming.

What about all of you? What do you do for your mental health?