#BellLetsTalk

Physicians as Humans: Supporting #BellLetsTalk

In Opinion by Teresa Chan1 Comment

Mental health is an area that is wrought with stigma. As healthcare practitioners, we all know that “we should know better” than to fall into the trap of perpetuating stigma and misunderstandings about mental health… but sometimes we forget to be as kind to ourselves as we are to our patients and clients.

The CanadiEM team is hoping to foster a national conversation about the struggles physicians face (including mental health!) with our healthcare colleagues. At the beginning of January, we launched the Physicians as Humans series with posts outlining the project and explaining why it is needed to highlights the importance of mental health, self-care, and wellness in the field of medicine. We have been astounded by the support and interest in this area! These posts have reached >7000 people around the globe and many brave colleagues have written us to contribute to this series in the near future. We are impressed with your interest in this initiative and very glad that you are as interested as us in starting this conversation.

In light of this, we thought we would test the waters of health advocacy work and reach out to the online community to ask for some help to raise some funds for Canadian mental health.

For Canadians, today (Wednesday, February 27, 2016) is #BellLetsTalk day (link). For our international readers, Bell is one of Canada’s largest telecommunications company and is sponsoring a campaign aimed to raise awareness around mental health issues. They have put together a number of commercials promoting this initiative (watch here, here, here, and here for examples) and a website outlining some simple ways to end the stigma against mental health.

We know that many of you are not Canadian, but we invite you to help us raise funds for mental health in our fine nation. For every tweet with the hashtag #BellLetsTalk, Bell will be donating $0.05 (Canadian) to various mental health initiatives. Help us raise some funds and spread the word by retweeting this message:

Teresa Chan

Senior Editor at CanadiEM
Emergency Physician. Medical Educator. #FOAMed Supporter, Producer and Researcher. Chief Strategy Officer of CanadiEM. Associate Professor, Division of Emergency Medicine, Department of Medicine, McMaster University.