This session was about getting practical with actions that are most needed to help mental health promotion flourish in Canada. Actions considered and built on keynote, panel, and participant perspectives. All session participants were invited to share their initial ideas…
The KDE Hub Annual Symposium is an opportunity to gather, to learn, to share, and work together for mental health promotion in Canada. These gatherings:
- Create supportive connections within and between the project communities that the Hub supports and those with shared interests
- Increase knowledge and build skills in selective areas that are relevant and timely for mental health promotion and mental illness prevention
- Inspire a shared vision for how learnings from projects can contribute to mental health promotion in Canada
Annual Symposium 2022
A Growth Phase for Mental Health Promotion in Canada: Helping it Flourish
Why a growth phase?
The COVID-19 pandemic reinforced and heightened the need for mental health promotion. Mental health is now part of everyday conversations in almost every household. People are hearing, thinking and talking about equity, including ways that identities, cultures, generations and places are systematically excluded, left behind or negatively impacted by our household, neighbourhood, organizational, community and societal norms and practices. Higher needs and greater awareness of them has led to more investment in mental health promotion, especially for those most impacted by the pandemic. Existing investments can also extend their impact, including the Mental Health Promotion Innovation Fund (MHP-IF) as it enters a second 4-year phase in 2022.
What does it mean to flourish?
To thrive. To grow and develop successfully. To play to strengths. To connect with like-minded people who have diverse experiences that can nourish your own. To learn with and from each other. To co-design how to spread mental health promotion benefits to all peoples and places in Canada, especially those most in need.
How can we help mental health promotion flourish?
Together – if your work is positioned as mental health promotion or influences determinants of mental health through food systems, community safety, homelessness, education, wellbeing or otherwise. Making the most of a growth phase for mental health promotion in Canada will take expanding awareness of what’s happening in all parts of the country and by whom, strengthening connections between people and resources that can support their work, and sharpening skills for learning as we go to inform ongoing improvements and choices about what to scale, with whom, where and how.
The KDE Hub Annual Symposium 2022 is happening in the early stages of a growth phase for mental health promotion in Canada. The event aims to:
- Grow awareness of mental health promotion innovations across the country. This includes the work of the Mental Health Promotion Innovation Fund, and initiatives that address determinants of mental health while leading with other issues.
- Grow connections with resources that can advance mental health promotion efforts. This includes gaining access to people, organizations, knowledge, and practical tools that can support your work.
- Grow skills for learning about promising approaches for advancing mental health promotion. This includes co-designing priorities for what to learn and exploring ways of learning that are suitable for different worldviews, populations, and settings.
Highlights from the 2022 Symposium
Options for helping participants flourish
Actions most needed to help mental health promotion flourish include actions to help ourselves flourish. This session reinforced the importance of self-care and offered self-care options for participants to try, including some that could be brought into participants’ own settings.…
Emerging new knowledge from the Mental Health Promotion Innovation Fund (phase 1)
Day 3 of the symposium was focused on knowledge for helping mental health promotion flourish. The first session of the day was a written summary of emerging knowledge from Mental Health Promotion Innovation Fund (MHP-IF) projects during Phase 1. The…
Animating emerging findings from the MHP-IF through project stories
This session brought to life findings shared in a written summary of emerging knowledge from Mental Health Promotion Innovation Fund (MHP-IF) projects during Phase 1. Two rounds of breakout room discussions led by project team members focused on a selection…
Panel and participant dialogue on making best use of the emerging knowledge and shaping future knowledge development activities
With insights from MHP-IF projects on how they adapted to evolving pandemic conditions and other experiences during Phase 1, this panel extended the knowledge mobilization story. What do we mean by ‘high quality evidence’? How can we approach knowledge mobilization…
Closing celebration: Consolidate the present, reflect on the past, anticipate the future
The closing session reflected on the forces that brought the 2022 symposium community together and provided perspective on the growth of the mental health promotion community and on critical success factors for building influence and impact in this field. Perspectives…
Annual Symposium 2021
The Mental Health Promotion Innovation Fund in Context: People, Positioning, Pandemic, Potential
The KDE Hub hosted the first annual symposium January 25-27, 2021. This symposium was a short, yet concentrated window of time during which those involved in the MHP-IF were invited to explore relevant and varied contexts influencing their work, and contexts they can influence. Speakers, discussants and guests from beyond the MHP-IF enriched the exploration and learning. Participants explored:- people and places of the Mental Health Promotion Innovation Fund (MHP-IF),
- positioning of the program on international through local levels,
- influence of the pandemic, and
- the potential to advance child and youth mental health promotion in Canada.
Opening Session
The opening session welcomed participants to the Annual Symposium and focused on the people and places of the Mental Health Promotion Innovation Fund (MHP-IF). Words of welcome were offered on behalf of the KDE Hub as the symposium host; the…
Child and Youth Mental Health Promotion in an International Context
One of the hallmarks of the Mental Health Promotion Innovation Fund (MHP-IF) is a focus on upstream determinants of mental health for children and youth: building protective factors and reducing risk factors at the individual, community, and structural levels. Yet…
Child and Youth Mental Health Promotion in the Canadian Context
How are we doing in Canada at improving the underlying determinants of positive mental health for children and youth? How can the MHP-IF contribute to advancing mental health promotion? This session considered the Canadian context in relation to the international…
Child and Youth Mental Health Promotion in Your Context
Preceded by sessions that explored mental health promotion within the international and national contexts, this interactive session used the iceberg systems model to help symposium participants explore the contexts, landscapes, and systems in which they work. The tip of the…