1. In any given year, in both Canada and the United States, approximately one in five people will live with a mental illness diagnosis. By the age of forty, approximately 50 per cent of the Canadian population will have or have had a mental illness. See “The State of Mental Health in America,” Mental Health America, http://www.mentalhealthamerica.net/issues/state-mental- health-america (accessed 7 March 2018); Mental Health Commission of Canada, “Making the Case for Investing in Mental Health in Canada,” 2013, https://www.mentalhealthcommission.ca/sites/default/files/2016-06/Investing_in_Mental_Health_FINAL_Version_ENG.pdf (accessed 5 November 2019); Canadian Mental Health Association, “Fast Facts About Mental Illness,” https://cmha.ca/about-cmha/fast-facts-about-mental-illness (accessed 4 April 2019). Disparities between generations (“birth cohorts”) show that Canadian and American youth are significantly more hopeless than previous generations. See David Lester, “Hopelessness in Undergraduate Students around the World: A Review,” Journal of Affective Disorders 150.3 (2013): 1204–1208. Life satisfaction has decreased between 1985 and 2005, with both sexes experiencing “comparable slippages in self-confidence, growing regrets about the past, and declines in virtually every measure of self-reported physical and mental health.” Chris M. Herbst, “‘Paradoxical’ Decline? Another Look at the Relative Reduction in Female Happiness,” Journal of Economic Psychology 32.5 (2011): 771.
2. See Sophie Grégoire Trudeau’s simplistic blog entry, “Why My Family Talks Openly about Mental Health,” Huffington Post, 12 October 2016, http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/sophie-gregoire-trudeau/talk-openly-mental-illness_b_12448768.html (accessed 5 April 2019); and Liz Kessler’s critical response on Canadian alternative news venue Rabble.ca: “Sophie Grégoire Trudeau Needs to Stop Talking about Mental Health,” 13 November 2016, http://rabble.ca/blogs/bloggers/liz-kessler/2016/11/sophie-gr%C3%A9goire-trudeau-needs-to-stop-talking-about-mental-health (accessed 5 November 2019). Margaret Trudeau’s memoir Changing My Mind (Toronto: Harper Collins Canada, 2011) details her experience with bipolar disorder, and her subsequent book, The Time of Your Life: Choosing a Vibrant Joyful Future (New Westminster: Post Hypnotic Press, 2015), builds her brand as a self-help author for women over sixty.
3. For a journalistic report on the Bell Let’s Talk campaign history, see Christine Dobby’s Globe and Mail article, “Bell CEO Calls on Corporate Canada to Implement Mental Health Programs,” Globe and Mail, 29 January 2018, https://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/bell-ceo-calls-on-corporate-canada-to-implement-mental-health-programs/article37781739/ (accessed 4 April 2019). One of the many ironies of the Bell Let’s Talk campaign—a topic which merits an entire article in its own right—is that it implicitly discourages long-term talk therapy by encouraging people to access short-term and medication-oriented psychiatric services.
4. In Canada, mental health funding has become a hot-button issue in failing budgetary negotiations between the federal government and the provinces, due largely to former Federal Health Minister Jane Philpott’s insistence “that billions in new federal money be devoted specifically to mental health care.” See Bill Curry, “Philpott Warns Premiers She Won’t Budge on Effort to Expand Mental-Health Funding,” Globe and Mail, 20 December 2016, https://www. theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/philpott-warns-premiers-she-wont-budge-on-effort-to-expand-mental-health-funding/article33397386/ (accessed 19 April 2019).
5. The Globe and Mail ran an opinion piece “Students Are Not Fragile Flowers: We Must Care about Their Mental Health,” written by Michael Wilson, the chancellor of the University of Toronto and the chair of the Mental Health Commission of Canada, and Santa Ono, the president and vice-chancellor of the University of British Columbia. Michael Wilson and Santa Ono, “Students Are Not Fragile Flowers: We Must Care about Their Mental Health,” Globe and Mail, 5 October 2017, https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/students-are-not-fragile-flowers-we-must-care-about-their-mental-health/article36498798/ (accessed 5 November 2019). The piece is reflective of this growing consciousness concerning mental health issues amongst postsecondary institution administrators. Around the same time, Maclean’s magazine devoted an article to the question, “Are universities doing enough to support mental health?” See Aaron Hutchings, “Are Universities Doing Enough to Support Mental Health?” Maclean’s, 20 April 2017, http://www.macleans.ca/education/depth-of-despair/ (accessed 1 November 2019). Earlier this year, the Canadian Alliance of Student Associations released a report which “delves into what mental health looks like currently on post-secondary campuses in Canada, and what steps the federal government can take to make improvements in the lives of those struggling.” Alyssa Max and Roseanne Waters, “Breaking Down Barriers: Mental Health and Post-Secondary Students,” Canadian Alliance of Student Associations, 9 January 2018, https://bp-net.ca/program/breaking-down-barriers-mental-health-and-canadian-post-secondary-students/ (accessed 5 November 2019).