Wishing everyone a safe and enjoyable #CivicHoliday! Thank you to everyone spending the day @OntarioShores caring f… https://t.co/MhBHL4Lhg8
Partnership with SilverCloud Offers Online Therapy for People Struggling with Mental Illness
Each day we are charged with the responsibility to be determined in our efforts to leverage innovation to provide exemplary care to our patients and families.
A new partnership between Ontario Shores and SilverCloud is certain to create greater opportunities for people struggling with mental illness by improving access to service for patients.
SilverCloud is an internet-based Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (eCBT) program that we will be able to offer as a treatment option for people with mild to moderate depression and anxiety. Beginning on May 1, eCBT, with coaching support provided by our clinicians, will be available in all of our outpatient services providing mood and anxiety treatments, spanning adolescents through to geriatric services. The coaches for SilverCloud are the same clinicians that support our individual and group-based psychotherapies. SilverCloud will be accessible for patients through a referral from their Ontario Shores’ psychiatrist or NP.
Words Matter for those Impacted by Mental Illness
For centuries society has affixed names and used labels that have created divisiveness, promoted discrimination and cast shame on things we don’t quite understand.
Whether it is equality, gay rights, race issues or complicated health issues, decades have been dedicated to education and building understanding with the hope of creating a world that is accepting of all.
At the centre of these movements has been a commitment to alter and eliminate commonly used language which was hurtful and offensive to those being marginalized. It is appalling to think of the words once used to describe and marginalize women, different races, sexual orientation or people with special needs.
'I Epitomized the Ignorance and Stigma Associated with Mental Illness'
If you meet Percy D’Souza today you will find it hard to imagine that he struggled with severe, treatment-resistant, psychotic depression.
Percy comes across as high energy, engaging and positive. And yet, just over a year ago, Percy was, as he puts it, ‘a living corpse’.
“I had given up on life,” he recalls. “I was consumed by shame, fear and hopelessness. I had come to believe that I was good-for-nothing, of no value to anyone.”
Brought up mostly in India in a middle-class family, Percy has had a relatively privileged education and a fairly successful career in healthcare sales and marketing.
