Mental Health Resources
The following may be of use to you. If you have a suggestions for other resources, please let me know!
Anxiety & Panic
From physician and neuroscientist Russell Kennedy, MD comes an award-winning book that offers a revolutionary, life-changing approach to healing anxiety. After years of trying different therapies for his debilitating anxiety without success, Dr. Russell Kennedy had an epiphany: anxiety does not start in the brain.
Based on hard science and over 10 years helping people who suffer from anxiety, Barry McDonagh shares his most effective technique in this new book. The DARE technique can be used by everyone, regardless of age or background, to live a life free from anxiety or panic attacks.
In Hope and Help for Your Nerves, Dr. Claire Weekes offers the results of years of experience treating real patients—including some who thought they'd never recover. With her simple, step-by-step guidance, you will learn how to understand and analyze your own symptoms of anxiety and find the power to conquer your fears for good.
Parenting & Children
Dr. Becky Kennedy, wildly popular parenting expert and creator of @drbeckyatgoodinside, shares her groundbreaking approach to raising kids and offers practical strategies for parenting in a way that feels good- all in Good Inside, an immediate #1 New York Times Bestseller.
In this pioneering, practical book, Daniel J. Siegel, neuropsychiatrist, and parenting expert Tina Payne Bryson offer a revolutionary approach to child rearing with twelve key strategies that foster healthy brain development, leading to calmer, happier children.
Highlighting the fascinating link between a child’s neurological development and the way a parent reacts to misbehaviour, No-Drama Discipline provides an effective, compassionate road map for dealing with tantrums, tensions, and tears — without causing a scene.
Relationships
Developed by Dr Sue Johnson over 20 years ago and practised all over the world, EFT has been heralded by Time magazine and the New York Times as the couple therapy with the highest rate of success. Couples who use EFT see a 75 per cent success rate.
In You Are the One You’ve Been Waiting For, Dr. Richard Schwartz, the celebrated founder of Internal Family Systems (IFS) therapy, offers a new way—a path toward courageous love that replaces the striving, dependent, and disconnected approach to solving relationship challenges.
With more than a million copies sold worldwide, The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work has revolutionized the way we understand, repair, and strengthen marriages. John Gottman's unprecedented study of couples over a period of years has allowed him to observe the habits that can make—and break—a marriage.
OCD Scrupulosity
Scrupulosity is a plaguing sense of being "bad" or "guilty" or "unforgiven." It's an obssessive-compulsive disorder and suffering from a case of the scruples can be excruciating.
Attached is a guide for people who have this condition and identify as Christian or Catholic. It was written first by a Redemptorist priest, Father Don Miller, some thirty years ago, and has been amended by Father Thomas Santa.
Scrupulosity OCD involves experiencing religious or moral obsessions as well as intrusive, unwanted thoughts, images, or urges. People with scrupulosity OCD will often find themselves obsessing over whether their thoughts or actions may be immoral, unethical, or sinful.
Intrusive thoughts are the trademark of OCD. As a matter of fact, there are forms of OCD that only have the obsessive element without the compulsive one.
We can consider obsessions as a form of intrusive thoughts. When we are obsessed, we just can’t stop thinking of something despite a part of ourselves is fed up with these thoughts. In many OCD cases, the content of such thoughts is quite disturbing for the person and generate more anxiety than before.
The vicious cycle continues with more anxiety and more obsessive thoughts, and the person uses compulsive behaviour to lower the anxiety… until the next cycle begins.
Embodiment & Somatic Healing
Psychologist and award-winning researcher Hillary McBride explores the broken and unhealthy ideas we have inherited about our body. Embodiment is the way we are in the world, and our embodiment is heavily influenced by who we have been allowed to be.
Mind-body practitioners Jen Mann and Karden Rabin, provide the first in-depth look at nervous system regulation, somatic therapy, Polyvagal theory, the vagus nerve, and the mind-body connection. The Secret Language of the Body teaches you how to move out of survival mode, regulate your nervous system, and heal your mind and body.
Practices for Embodied Living is an experiential guide for readers who want to practice embodiment. This approachable, visually stimulating book helps individuals and groups resist cultural myths about ideal bodies, get in touch with the goodness of their bodies, and more fully inhabit themselves.
Websites & Other Resources
Emergency
Call 9-1-1 if you are in an emergency.
​
Crisis Lines
-
Call 1-800-784-2433 or dial 9-8-8 if you are experiencing feelings of distress or despair, including thoughts of suicide
-
For kids and youth in Canada experiencing a crisis, the Kids Help Phone offers 24/7 support through phone, text or online chat.
-
Phone: Call 1-800-668-6868
-
Text: Text CONNECT to 686868
-
Online Chat: Visit Kids Help Phone for online chat support.
-
Indigenous Support: If you identify as Indigenous, you can ask to be connected with a First Nations, Inuk or Métis crisis responder by messaging FIRST NATIONS, INUIT or METIS to 686868 ​​
-
​
Websites:
-
HereToHelp
-
Mental health and substance use information you can trust.
-
Explore strategies to help you take care of your mental health and use substances in healthier ways, find the information you need to manage mental health and substance use problems, and learn how you can support a loved one
-
-
HelpStartsHere.gov.bc.ca
-
People need access to the right supports, at the right time, that meet them where they are at, easily and quickly.​The site has over 2,600 service listings publicly-funded or not-for-profit mental health and substance use supports and many articles featuring easy to understand language and curated information about commonly searched topics.
-
-
Anxiety Canada
-
​Anxiety Canada is a registered charity created to raise awareness about anxiety and support access to proven resources and treatment. Our accessible online resources help people manage and cope with anxiety and related disorders, including OCD and PTSD. We are a leader in developing free, evidence-based self-help tailored to children, teens, parents, educators, adults, older adults, and caregivers.
-
-
Kelty Mental Health Resource Centre
-
​This site provides mental health and substance use information, resources, and peer support to families across BC. We also provide information and resources to people of all ages with an eating disorder or disordered eating concern. All of our services are free of charge, and you can reach us over the phone (1-800-665-1822), by email (keltycentre@cw.bc.ca), by Zoom video call (please contact us to arrange), or in person.
-
-
Youth In BC
-
YouthInBC.com and its chat services are operated by the Crisis Intervention and Suicide Prevention Centre of BC which is dedicated to providing help and hope to individuals, organizations, and communities.
-
-
Parent Peer Support - FamilySmart
-
We provide emotional support, information, resources, and help in navigating services for parents & caregivers of a child, youth or young adult with a mental health and/or substance use challenge.
-
Our Peer Support services are free. No waitlist. We get it.
-
-
BounceBack
-
​BounceBack® is a free skill-building program designed to help adults and youth 13+ manage low mood, mild to moderate depression, anxiety, stress or worry. Delivered online or over the phone with a coach, you will get access to tools that will support you on your path to mental wellness.
-
-
Foundry
-
Foundry’s vision is to transform access to services for young people ages 12–24 in BC.
-
Foundry is a province-wide network of integrated health and wellness services for young people ages 12-24.
-
Our integrated services make it possible for young people to access five core services in one convenient location: mental health care, substance use services, physical and sexual health care, youth and family peer supports, and social services. For more information, please visit the Integrated Youth Services website.
-
Young people can access our integrated services by walking into one of our 17 local Foundry centres, exploring our online tools and resources at foundrybc.ca, or connecting virtually through the free Foundry BC app. Learn more about our impact HERE.
-
-
​
Phone Apps:
Worry Dolls App (ios & Andriod)
HeadSpace Meditation App
Calm App
Trauma
Dr. Bessel van der Kolk, one of the world’s foremost experts on trauma, has spent over three decades working with survivors. In The Body Keeps the Score, he uses recent scientific advances to show how trauma literally reshapes both body and brain, compromising sufferers’ capacities for pleasure, engagement, self-control, and trust.
In Healing Trauma, Dr. Levine gives you the personal how-to guide for using the theory he first introduced in his highly acclaimed work Waking the Tiger. Join him to discover: how to develop body awareness to "renegotiate" and heal traumas by "revisiting" them rather than reliving them; emergency "first-aid" measures for times of distress; and nature's lessons for uncovering the physiological roots of your emotions.
Gabor Maté’s bestselling books have changed the way we look at addiction and have been integral in shifting the conversations around ADHD, stress, disease, embodied trauma, and parenting. Gabor eloquently dissects how in Western countries that pride themselves on their health care systems, chronic illness and general ill health are on the rise.