‘Get Loud’ focus of Mental Health Week

May 3, 2017 | 5:15 PM

KAMLOOPS — This is Mental Health Week and those who spend time with patients are urging people to speak up about their mental health issues.

The Executive Director of the Canadian Mental Health Association in Kamloops says the theme of this year’s awareness campaign is ‘Get Loud.’

Christa Mullaly points to a recently produced video highlighting the ‘Get Loud’ theme.

It encourages those affected by mental health challenges to reach out for help.

“Often times people are embarrassed to talk about their illness, or people don’t know how to listen to other people talk about their illness,” said Mullaly. “It makes people feel uncomfortable. We really want to be able to promote people speaking freely about their illness, speaking freely about their health and what helps them. We know that by talking about mental health it helps people to feel safe, it helps people to recover and it helps them to heal.”

While the CMHA provides support services in Kamloops, Mullaly says dire changes are needed in provincial healthcare, making it easier for patients to get help.

“We’ve got a health care crisis in this provide and certainly in this city when it comes to being able to access primary care,” added Mullaly. “Folks that aren’t able to advocate for themselves often have a very difficult time accessing services when they need to access it. What we see is this bottleneck at our emergency department when people become very unwell and need to access acute emergency services. There’s a better way to do this, there’s a better way to do this, and it means that we need to change our system in order to allow people to get the care they need when they need it.”

To view the ‘Get Loud’ video visit ‘CMHA Kamloops’ on Facebook.