Charity Showcase - National Defence Workplace Charitable Campaign 2020

Canadian Association for Suicide Prevention

The Canadian Association for Suicide Prevention (CASP) envisions a Canada without suicide. Since 1985, CASP has worked towards the achievement of its mission by advocating, communicating, and educating for suicide prevention, intervention, postvention and life promotion in Canada. CASP’s most notable efforts include:

• Formulating the first Blueprint for a Canadian national suicide prevention strategy in 2004. After an enormous amount of advocacy work, this then formed the basis for the Federal Framework for Suicide Prevention (Public Health Agency of Canada).
• Co-founding Canada’s National Collaborative for Suicide Prevention, along with the Public Health Agency of Canada and the Mental Health Commission of Canada, to bring together many agencies working within the field of suicide prevention to promote knowledge exchange, mobilize suicide prevention efforts across Canada and provide a catalyst for policy development.
• Hosting an annual National Conference on suicide prevention that allows researchers, policy makers, clinicians, people with lived experience and all those invested in suicide prevention efforts in Canada to come together as a community.  In recent years, the special circumstances of first responders has been highlighted.  

Regrettably, in 2019, the largest number of military suicides occurred in Canada since 2014. In the last decade, a total of 175 Canadian military personnel died by suicide. That is more than the 158 members killed while serving in Afghanistan from 2001 to 2014. As the national organization for suicide prevention in Canada, CASP respects the ongoing efforts by the Canadian Armed Forces to make suicide prevention a top priority. While numbers give us information and understanding, we all know that there are real people, families, and communities behind these statistics. CASP will continue to champion the cause to strengthen awareness, lower risks and help prevent suicide. One suicide is too many.

A driving force in suicide prevention and life promotion, CASP actively works to keep the complexity of suicide on the public agenda. In addition to the National Conference, CASP hosts events and educational days such as the Canadian component to World Suicide Prevention Day and International Day for People Impacted by Suicide Loss. CASP respects inclusivity and values the voice of Indigenous peoples within our organization as well as ensuring we are truly bilingual in the Nation’s two official languages. A leader in developing connections for people impacted by suicide as well as bringing together those who provide crucial support for those impacted by suicide, CASP has recently launched a new national Suicide Bereavement & Postvention Alliance, which builds bridges between researchers, clinicians, and the community. As part of the Alliance’s activities, CASP will be launching a network for facilitators of suicide bereavement support groups in order to exchange knowledge, best practices and support one another. With the support of donations from individual Canadians, CASP will continue to advocate and promote awareness on the crisis of suicide and the importance of mental health in this country.

Wounded Warriors Canada

Wounded Warriors Canada is a national mental health service provider utilizing clinical best practices and evidence-based care to create an environment of compassion, resiliency and hope for Canada’s Veterans, First Responders and their families. 

The organization provides a wide range of programs and services benefiting individual members, couples, spouses, and children affected by Operational Stress Injuries such as PTSD. Their programs are provided with anonymity and confidentiality for all participants.

Behind the therapy itself, and in front of those they serve, is the clinical team. Wounded Warriors Canada has assembled a group of over 100 clinicians nationally who possess the cultural competency necessary to support the unique mental health needs of uniformed service members and their families. When you combine their leading-edge programs, with the vast clinical expertise of their facilitators, the results are life-changing and, at times, life-saving. 

Youth Mental Health Canada

About YMHC

Youth Mental Health Canada is a grass roots, community-based, youth-led charitable non-profit organization focused on youth, family and community engagement for mental health education, support, advocacy and change. We are not publicly funded and have no paid staff. Despite this, we have contributed to provincial and national change in education that supports students with mental health disabilities.

COVID Mental Health

COVID19 has impacted the mental health and wellness of all Canadians. Providing online vehicles to communicate mental health messages, information and resources and support the mental health and wellness of young people is an important part of our work. We produced a comprehensive COVID mental health database that provides regional, national and international information and resources on mental health, crisis support, Indigenous resources, educational resources and community response networks. We have also produced multilingual COVID and mental health infographics and memes and provided weekly Insta Live chats (multilingual) and workshops.

Some of our work includes

In September, we launched a national mental health film contest pilot program, YMHC Directing Change Canada (DCC). We are working with our partners in the United States, Directing Change, who have led successful state-wide mental health film contests for almost 10 years. DCC is an innovative way to use a compelling medium like filmmaking and make short films that inspire hope in young people who are struggling with their mental health. The focus of the contest is on mental health matters and mental health through a cultural lens.

YMHC has produced five mental wellness resources, including our COVID mental wellness journal workbook, In This Together: My Life During a Global Pandemic. We do not simply allow youth to struggle with their mental health and then react to mental health crises, issues and challenges - YMHC provides proactive tools for wellness to prevent them. These mental wellness tools need to be in the hands of all students, families, educators and schools and community organizations. For more information about the resources: https://edu.ymhc.ngo/resources-and-tools/