Speaker: Mara Grunau
Session Description:
Community mental health is a ‘way of being’ in community: an ecosystem of care. It’s the network of supports, relationships, and conditions that help us live well in the places we already belong: our homes, schools, workplaces, neighbourhoods, Nations, communities, and chosen circles of care. When implemented systematically and collaboratively, it results in a healthier environment for everyone, one that helps us find hope, belonging, meaning and purpose. This presentation explores how community mental health helps us stay well, supports recovery, reduces isolation, strengthens access, and helps people move from surviving systems to truly belonging in community.
Community mental health is rooted in the belief that people are not problems to be fixed but that we are all individuals with strengths, histories, cultures, relationships, rights, and hopes. Mentally healthy communities are intentionally designed. They’re built by weaving together evidence, lived experience, and innovation. Mentally healthy communities help us thrive and stay well and ensure that there are safety nets and supports before, during, and after a crisis, should it occur. Community mental health includes mental health promotion, achieved at a societal level through healthy public policy and grounded at the community and individual level through education, peer and family support, and coordinated action.
Participants of this interactive session will leave with a clearer understanding of community mental health as both a model of care and a shared responsibility: one that asks us to co-create systems, services, and communities, and the role each of us plays in building it.
Learning Objectives:
After attending this session, participants will appreciate:
The role each organization plays in community mental health’s implementation.
That community mental health is a whole-of-society approach, critical to building a culture of wellness;
How community mental health promotes and enhances people’s recovery journeys; and
Bio:
Mara Grunau is CEO of the Canadian Mental Health Association, Alberta Division and Centre for Suicide Prevention (CMHA AB + CSP). For decades, she has led efforts to expand community mental health and suicide prevention impact across Alberta and Canada. A longstanding community leader, she has advised national initiatives including 988 and is the Canadian representative to the International Association for Suicide Prevention. Provincially and locally, she has helped shape Alberta’s youth suicide prevention action plan and catalyzes local suicide prevention and mental health initiatives across Alberta, that help people find hope, belonging, meaning and purpose. Mara holds a Bachelor of Education and a Master of Public Policy and Administration.