This blog features highlights from conversations about mental healthcare transformation on the Wicked Mind pod, hosted by Dr. Diane McIntosh. Listen to the full conversation with Dr. Matthew Chow and then explore others in the Wicked Mind series.
Dr. Matthew Chow has noticed one defining characteristic among his young patients since the pandemic started.
“I’m worried about the loss of hope,” he says.
Dr. Chow, a specialist in child and youth mental health and TELUS Health’s Chief Mental Health Officer, says that over the past three years children and adolescents have seen their lives disrupted, which prevented them from forming meaningful relationships and enjoying life’s milestones, such as graduations and parties. “Just so much was deferred,” he added.
But now, he says, the key is to provide young people with a new message: that something good can come, even out of very difficult times.
“We are emerging from one of the greatest crises that any of us alive right now have ever experienced in their lifetimes,” he says.
According to Dr. Chow, in order to process the pandemic’s frightening events, we have to harness our “superpower,” which is our ability to find meaning in almost any experience. Finding meaning provides the possibility to restore hope and reverse the disruptive impact we all experienced through the pandemic.
He says employers have a critical role to play in ensuring employees and the younger members of their families are supported and given access to mental health support.
Through prevention, early intervention and the normalization of mental health issues, Dr. Chow believes more people who are suffering will ask for and accept the help they need.
Here’s how employers can take action now to become mental health leaders.