Firstly I want to thank you and the all-party mental health caucus, which worked so hard on that handbook for mental health literacy for all parliamentarians and our teams. It has been hugely important that people are using the right words and are able to understand their feelings and describe their feelings, but also know how to navigate themselves or their loved ones to help.
I think that when we look at stigma, the best way to replace stigma is with education. When we raise the mental health literacy of our population, we can understand that we've been asking the wrong questions. It's not, “What's the matter with that person?” It's, “What happened to that person?” in terms of being trauma-informed.
Is what we are giving culturally safe, or is it a high barrier because people have been treated badly before and are afraid to reach out for help?
If we could do more on mental health literacy in the curricula of all the schools across the country.... It has been the goal of Dr. Kutcher that when we have health classes, there are mental health classes, too, so that people are able to be in touch with their feelings, so that stress for an exam isn't an anxiety state and so that the grief after someone has died is not a depression.
What are normal emotions, and when do those normal emotions tip over into the kind of illness that requires treatment?