Wishing everyone a spooktacular day!
Monthly Archives: October 2013
NEDIC Blog Post: Speak Up – A Call Out to the Guys
Speak Up – A Call Out to the Guys
Posted on October 21, 2013 by nedic
I was going to college for health and fitness in Toronto when my behaviours became extreme. As my weight and health quickly plummeted no one asked me what was going on. Even at my physically worst I was only ever asked about drug use by doctors, but never a question about food or exercise. Hidden in plain sight, I was a man with an eating disorder.
That was 4 years ago. Now I have a successful career in health and fitness, and I live a lifestyle that is actually healthy, with no extremes. Eating and exercise are now just two of the many fantastic components of my life. Alright, that’s enough of me boasting about me.
How did I turn it around? And why should anyone reading this care?
I turned my life around because I decided to speak. I hope that anyone reading this does care, because I believe that one of the biggest steps to getting better is to speak honestly about it.
In speaking out loud, I realized that I was far from being the only guy to not feel good about his body. In speaking out loud, I was given support and people who wanted to help me get better. In speaking out load, I started to regain hope that maybe I didn’t have to live such an exhausting life.
Being able to speak out allowed me to understand exactly what I had been doing. My behaviours, my lack of self-worth – it all became more concrete somehow. By getting it out, I was then able to reflect on it objectively. When I realized that no one else was judging me for my eating disorder, I slowly began to stop judging myself.
Sadly, in our society, it is all too common for women to be pestered about their eating habits (which I am sure is annoying ladies, do not get me wrong), with men are rarely asked these same questions. Unfortunately, the job is most often left up to us guys to come forward on our own, and while there may be some added obstacles, I implore any man out there who is suffering to talk about it.
I spend a fair amount of my time talking to people about talking, as I believe that it is a key step in letting the eating disorder out of your system and moving on from it and toward a better life. I personally spoke with family and a few friends at first. I later moved on to professionals, both in group settings and one on one. However, it was that first day that I said anything to my mother that I felt a small crack in the freezing cold ice, when just a miniscule amount of warmth came through. While every person’s path is individual, talking is always a key component.
I leave you with this letter.
Dear all boys, men, guys, dudes: Talk to a friend. Talk to a parent. Talk to a partner. Talk to a professional. Talk to a doctor. Talk to a therapist. Talk to a specialist. There are options out there.
If you live in the Toronto area and are a self-identified man with body image concerns, Sheena’s Place (http://www.sheenasplace.org/) is holding a confidential focus group in order to help them develop a men’s body image help group on October 23rd at 6pm. For more information contact info@sheenasplace.org
Jay Walker is a Certified Personal Trainer through the Canadian Society of Exercise Physiology. He is pursuing his Masters of Counselling Psychology and will be attending the above noted event at Sheena’s Place.
Contact us for more information about Riverwalk Wellness Centres’ support for males. Email info@edoyr.com or call 905-886-6632.
U.S. News Health: Just 12 Percent of Women Over 50 Are ‘Satisfied’ With Their Bodies
When Chrisler lectures to women’s groups about how to feel better in their own skin, she offers the following tips.
Focus on health, not on weight. Eat a variety of foods, exercise and get enough sleep. Have a massage from time to time. Moisturize your skin. Wear clothes that fit. “A lot of women are not nice to themselves because they’re disappointed in their bodies,” she said.
Watch more foreign movies. “If you watch films from France and Japan, you’ll see many more older women than you see in U.S. movies, and they’re not all skinny as rails,” she said.
Avoid fashion magazines. “They’re full of young women and they’re wearing clothes that don’t look good on older women. They’re not made for us,” Chrisler said.
Don’t consider it a personal failure if the jeans you wore in high school don’t fit you in your 50s. “Women do gain weight at each reproductive milestone,” she said. “We gain weight at menarche, with the birth of each child and we gain weight at menopause, so we’re not going to have the same body size and shape at 50 as we had at 20. And if we don’t expect that, that would be a help.”
Read the full article here: http://health.usnews.com/health-news/news/articles/2013/10/22/just-12-percent-of-women-over-50-are-satisfied-with-their-bodies
Global News Toronto: Weight shaming: Should a Child’s Weight be Discussed in Front of Them?
EDMONTON – Lauren Wood says her five-year-old daughter Lillian can’t seem to stop thinking about her weight ever since a visit to a Strathcona County immunization clinic in August.
A public health nurse described Lillian as “large” on the BMI (Body Mass Index) scale. Lillian was in the room at the time.
She and her husband didn’t fully realize the statement’s impact on Lillian until they left the clinic.
“On the way home, she asked if she was too big, and why she was too big. And then later she was playing, and got on the scale…and asked us if she was still too big,” Wood recalled, adding how hard it is to see her daughter pre-occupied about weight at such a young age.
Read the rest of the article here: http://globalnews.ca/news/921741/weight-shaming-when-is-a-child-old-enough-to-hear-they-are-overweight/
Zen Comfort
– Japanese Folk Zen saying
Lily Myers – “Shrinking Women”
Lily Myers’ slam poem, “Shrinking Women,” which won Best Love Poem at the 2013 College Unions Poetry Slam Invitational in April, perfectly expresses the pressure women feel to take up less and less space, to be quiet, to be small and to eat sparingly.
You have been taught to grow out, I have been taught to grow in. You learn from our father how to emit, how to produce, to roll each thought off your tongue with confidence. You used to lose your voice every other week from shouting so much. I learned to absorb. I took lessons from our mother in creating space around myself. I learned to read the knots in her forehead while the guys went out for oysters.
Thank you to Justin Hines and Ash & Bloom for the “Vehicle of Change Tour”!
The Auroran: Arts and Culture
Musicians hope to take “vehicle” international
October 23, 2013
By Brock Weir
The phrase “have gun, will travel” is a well-used one, but it’s a philosophy not unlike that shared by musicians Justin Hines, and Ash & Bloom. They don’t need much – just some room and board, a place to play, and a good cause.
The trio of Hines, James Bloemendal and Matt McKenna, appeared at the Aurora Cultural Centre earlier this month to support Eating Disorders of York Region’s (EDOYR) Riverwalk Wellness Centre.
EDOYR director Janice Morgante has long been a fan of Hines, and when she went to a recent show announcing his Vehicle of Change tour, she knew this would be a perfect fit for her organization. The Vehicle of Change Tour is the brainchild of Hines and his management team, the Agency of Extraordinary People, to quite literally be a vehicle of change to non-profits and worthy causes the length and breadth of North America.
Groups sought them out, and vice-versa, and the result was over a year on the road building a perfect harmony – all for the cost of room and board, with full proceeds going to the group that brought them there.
“We had this idea of doing something a little different and not the standard musical tour,” said Hines. “We wanted to do something meaningful and outside the box. We wanted to be inclusive and part of the change for everybody. We have had a lot of things to figure out along the way, but we have connected with so many different people from all different walks of life and it has been amazing.”
Adds Bloemendal: “The whole idea behind Extraordinary People is everyone has the opportunity to be extraordinary and one of those ways is changing the lives of those around them”
Hines connected with Ash & Bloom by chance as well, having a brainstorm seeing them on stage in Port Perry. Sensing they could make beautiful music together, they are, “miraculously”, still friends after spending more than 12 months in close quarters in a vehicle, and a rotating cast of friends and pets.
The Aurora stop was the last in their Vehicle of Change tour and, in the meantime, they are taking time to regroup, evaluate their success, and chart an even grander goal for the years ahead – taking their “vehicle” international. In the meantime, Ash & Bloom are working on their album which drops this fall and the duo will be returning to the Cultural Centre for a concert on December 8.
“I’m excited to watch their evolution and progression,” said Hines. “This has been awesome for me. In some ways they’re like my baby. Wait, that sounds really weird.”
“Thanks, Dad!” said McKenna with a laugh.
“Yeah, that was much weirder than I thought it would be.”
Source: http://www.newspapers-online.com/auroran/?p=4354
Farewell message from Justin as the “Vehicle of Change Tour” comes to an end: http://www.pledgemusic.com/projects/justinhines/updates/27885
COPA Blog Repost: Bullying as Lateral Violence
Source: http://info-copa.tumblr.com/post/63483753952/bullying-as-lateral-violence
From COPA’s Capsule Families Series 2.
Those most at risk of lateral violence in its raw physical form are family members and, in the main, the most vulnerable members of the family: old people, women and children. Especially the children.
-Marcia Langton, Australian Aboriginal activist, researcher and writer
COPA is a violence prevention education agency. Since 1995 we have been advocating for human rights, and in particular children’s rights by providing schools in Ontario with a unique and carefully conceptualized repertoire of programs and multimedia resources for students and adults.
These resources address the kinds of violence that children and youth are most likely to encounter; that is, all types of violence. Our strategies for addressing the issue of violence are based on a well-developed rights-based analysis, acknowledging young people’s minority status in society, as well as the intersection of vulnerability experienced by other marginalized groups. Strategies are carefully designed to challenge social factors of vulnerability that precipitate inequity and exclusion for a range of social groups whose members may experience many forms of violence and abuse.
Since its inception in 1995, COPA has been working with a range of adults affiliated with Ontario’s school system to articulate a feminist analysis of violence as an expression of power and control that manifests as a social problem. Those who hold less power and control in our society are more likely to experience violence – of all kinds. Those who are on the outskirts of our power centres are also more likely to perpetrate violence. This is known as lateral violence:
Lateral violence is a term that describes the way people in positions of powerlessness, covertly or overtly direct their dissatisfaction inward toward each other, toward themselves, and toward those less powerful than themselves.
COPA argues that bullying is a form of lateral violence; bullying in schools is widespread and symptomatic of children’s minority social status. Though far from an effective strategy, bullying by young people is violence perpetrated laterally – that is, against their peers – those who are more vulnerable than the perpetrators. It is a form of asserting social control.
Why do people who bully others typically choose those who are more likely to be ostracized by others, are thought of as different, and perceived as weaker or more fragile? Power over others is more easily asserted this way. Ironically, those who are bullied in greater numbers are those whose lower social status is further compounded by inequities related to gender, class, ethnicity, religious, civil status or sexual identity and orientation, physical or intellectual ability, etc.
Many adults continue to be surprised by the amount of cruelty we hear about among children. When asked if bullying is suddenly an epidemic, at COPA we answer that is as widespread as violence in adult milieux.
Bullying is not a mysterious ailment that attacks our society. It is embedded in social patterns of inequity that we often unwittingly perpetrate. Children – and all people – express themselves in destructive ways, when they feel angry, invisible, helpless and desperate. Children learn cruel behaviour from us, the big people, their role models.
Children who are raised in safe, strong and free environments tend to be less abusive, and exhibit more kindness and respect for others. They are more likely to be accepting and inclusive, and are less likely to hurt others, to target them and try to cause them pain and suffering, or to join in with others who do so. Research also shows that warm family relationships and positive home environments help to buffer children from the negative outcomes associated with bullying*.
Babies are not born as ‘bullies’; in fact, increasing numbers of studies show that we are born with a physiological capacity and evolutionary need to be empathic. Children who systematically terrorize others as a reaction are doing so in order to assert control where they can. Terrorizing them in response accelerates this vicious cycle. Conversely, fostering environments within which each person has a meaningful place, is welcome and feels that they belong is an essential step in the opposite direction – hand in hand with the recognition that social inequity is at the root of bullying.
We can challenge the cycle of violence that we seem to tolerate in all realms of our society and sometimes even perpetrate. In this way we will undo the complicated web of abuse that constitutes bullying and peer violence. Recognizing children as a group of people with marginal social status is central to our understanding. Creating conditions for meaningful change is essential to creating safe, strong and free schools, homes and communities all around us.
* L. Bowes, B. Maughan, A. Caspi, T. Moffitt and L. Arsenault, “Families Promote Emotional and Behavioural Resilience to Bullying: Evidence of an Environmental Effect,” Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry 51:7 (2010): 809-17.
COPA’s whole-school program, The CAP (Child Assault Prevention) Project and its follow-up whole-school program ACT (Adults and Children Together) explicitly address the issue of peer violence and bullying. COPA also offers a day-long bullying prevention workshop for teachers (The Power to Change) and a shorter session for parents (Strategies for Change). ContactCOPA for access to our programs and multimedia resources.
The Star: We are Failing Young Canadians on Mental Health
We are failing young Canadians on mental health
Canada’s two-tier youth mental health system cannot be allowed to continue.
Partners for Mental Health launched a campaign called Right By You to tackle the most pressing issue facing the mental health system — the unequal access to mental health services, treatment and supports for children and youth in need.
By: Michael Kirby
Published on Mon Oct 07 2013
Published on Mon Oct 07 2013
While child and youth mental health has received much well-deserved attention in recent years, Ontario and the rest of Canada continue to struggle with the untenable reality that Canada has a two-tier system of care for children and youth needing mental health services.
There are up to 795,000 children and youth (up to the age of 24) in Ontario who have at least one mental health issue, the most common of which are anxiety disorder, attention deficit/hyperactivity, conduct disorder, depression and substance abuse.
While that number may surprise you, what’s more shocking is that only one in four of these children receives the mental health help they need.
The problem is that generally in Canada, government-provided health care only covers the cost of psychological support services provided by psychiatrists, for whom there is typically a one-year waiting period to get an appointment. Some children have waited up to four years for help. During this waiting period, their mental health often deteriorates, in many cases quite dramatically.
However, if a family has the financial means, they can afford to pay for mental health services provided by a psychologist or a social worker in the private sector. Thus, we have a two-tier health system in child and youth mental health.
Not providing mental health services to our children can have devastating results. Suicide is the leading cause of non-accidental death among youth ages 15 to 24, and the leading cause of death in children and adolescents ages 10 to 19 in First Nations populations.
Canada’s youth suicide rate is higher than many other industrialized countries, including the United States and the United Kingdom. More disturbing is the fact that one of the most important risk factors for suicide is the presence of an untreated mental disorder. This is the case in 90 per cent of youth suicides.
This situation cannot be allowed to continue. Partners for Mental Health — a national, charitable organization dedicated to transforming the way Canadians think about, act toward and support mental health in Canada — last week launched a campaign calledRight By You to tackle the most pressing issue facing the mental health system — the unequal access to mental health services, treatment and supports for our children and youth in need.
The Right By You campaign will generate greater awareness of the need for better access to youth mental health services, treatment and supports. It calls on federal, provincial and territorial governments to take action to ensure our children have the help they need and deserve, and to end the two-tier mental health system for children and youth in Canada.
Provincial governments must ensure that every child and youth living in Canada has access to mental health services as soon as the need arises, regardless of their family’s ability to pay for those services. In most cases, this can be done for $1,000 per child, which is a small price to pay to ensure our children have the help they need.
Offering universal access to mental health services and supports to young people is not without precedent. Australia is leading the world in ensuring that the basic mental health needs of children are met, and Canada should follow suit.
Beyond the improved health outcomes, economics tells us that this approach makes sense. Mental illnesses and addictions cost Ontario at least $39 billion a year, a figure that does not account for the overwhelming emotional costs to people living with a mental illness and their friends and families.
There is strong evidence that promotion, prevention and early intervention targeted at children and families can produce significant net cost benefits to Canada. For every $1 spent on early intervention and treatment of mental illness in children and youth, an estimated $7 will be saved in future health-care costs.
While the Ontario government has made strides in recent years on addressing this gap in service, including releasing a long-term strategy for mental health and addictions with children and youth as a priority for investment, there is more that must be done.
We can no longer stand by and allow the system to fail our children. They deserve more. It’s time to do right by our young Canadians.
Former senator Michael Kirby is both the Founding Chair of Partners for Mental Health and the Mental Health Commission of Canada. To learn more about the Right by You campaign, go to www.righhtbyyou.ca
Life in Balance 