By Cassie MacDonell
Local Journalism Initiative
“Sometimes (older adults) don’t want to admit they are having a problem,” Esther Barnett, president of Mental Health Estrie, explained.
May 2 kicked off this year’s edition of the Canadian Mental Health Association (CMHA) Mental Health Week. This year’s theme? Empathy. The theme will centre around breaking the stigma of mental health by using active listening, without using judgement.
Every May, for the last 72 years, CMHA has hosted its Mental Health Week. You read that right. Seventy-two years. Since 1950, supporting people’s mental health has been the goal of the CMHA, however, conversations about mental health only made their way into the mainstream population in the last decade. Older adults have experienced this stigma for most of their lives.
Mental health has worsened over the course of the pandemic. According to Statistics Canada, almost 18 per cent of Québec citizens aged 65 and over report their current mental health as worse compared to their pre-pandemic levels. This does not include those who, as Barnett stated, may not want to admit what they are going through.
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