Mental Health Supports & Programming

The Need

Mental health supports and programming are extremely important to Sherbourne’s community. Our clients and community members face significant barriers in their lives – homelessness, trauma, substance-use issues, settlement and immigration, and forms of oppression such as homophobia and transphobia significantly impact experiences of mental wellness and overall health. Our community members need focused and appropriate mental health supports to meet their needs. For example, trans people are at higher risk of suicide. The Trans PULSE Survey (2010), a sample of trans people in Ontario, found that 36% of trans people in Ontario had suicidal thoughts  over the past year and 10% had attempted suicide. This is even more serious for trans youth as 47% of trans youth aged 16-24 had considered suicide and 19% had attempted suicide in the past year.

Mental Health Supports & Programming at Sherbourne

Sherbourne has an extensive mental health program that provides free and accessible one-to-one and group-based supports to members of our communities. We understand that mental health is integral to overall health and is a state of well-being that is fluid, dynamic and important at every stage of life. Sherbourne’s mental health counsellors provide focused supports with specialized and culturally appropriate services for LGBT2SQ community members, refugees and newcomers to Canada and people experiencing homelessness. Group-based services include groups designed to support clients around substance use, clients experiencing anxiety and depression, skills development for survivors of trauma and other groups to meet our client’s needs.

Mental health support is a core component across all of Sherbourne’s services. For example, in Sherbourne’s Supporting Our Youth (SOY) program, one-to-one goal planning services provide intensive supports to LGBT2SQ youth to develop positive outcomes, like improved mental health. Many youth identify health and mental health needs as important goals to work towards. In SOY’s groups that support newcomer and refugee youth, racialized youth, and trans and gender non-binary youth, improving mental health and wellness is a core component.

Impacts

• Direct mental health supports: Providing one-to-one health supports and mental health counselling services directly impacts our clients by supporting their mental health needs. By meeting with mental health counsellors to address mental health needs and concerns, clients receive the health services they need to achieve wellness.
• Skills development: In one-to-one and group-based supports, clients of Sherbourne learn important skills to support their mental wellbeing. In groups designed to improve skills to deal with depression and trauma to learning about self-care and arts-based expression, our communities benefit from developing skills to enhance mental wellness.
• Reduced isolation: Helping clients reduce isolation by participating in activities and groups at Sherbourne is vital to supporting mental wellness. We strive to creative opportunities for community development and activities that inspire connections and friendships to be made. We have heard that youth clients in our SOY groups come to see the friends they make at Sherbourne as their “chosen family.”

Your support to Mental Health Programming at Sherbourne matters. Through generous donations and community support, we can offer kind and culturally appropriate mental health services to help our clients on their path to wellness.

We encourage you to donate now at www.sherbourne.on.ca/donate.