How Movement-Based Play Is Changing Autism Therapy — And Why Social Work Should Take Note

Discover how full-body movement therapy boosts executive functioning in children with autism — and why social workers should care.

The Body in Autism Interventions: A Missed Opportunity in Social Work

In the realm of social work, we often prioritize cognitive and emotional frameworks, sometimes overlooking the profound impact of the body on behavior and development. Recent research underscores the necessity of integrating physical movement into therapeutic practices, especially for children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD).

What New Research Tells Us About Movement-Based Therapy

A pilot study published in Disability and Rehabilitation reveals that whole-body movement play—activities like yoga, dance, and obstacle courses—significantly enhances inhibitory control and reduces negative behaviors in children with ASD. Unlike traditional sedentary interventions focusing on fine motor skills, these dynamic activities engage gross motor functions, leading to improvements in executive functioning and self-regulation.  

Dr. Anjana Bhat, a pediatric physical therapist and lead researcher of the study, emphasizes the multifaceted benefits of movement-based interventions. She notes that such activities not only bolster motor skills but also foster social and cognitive development. This holistic approach aligns seamlessly with social work’s commitment to addressing the comprehensive needs of individuals. 

 Implications for Social Work Practice

Integrating movement into social work practice isn’t merely about physical activity; it’s about recognizing the interconnectedness of body and mind. By incorporating movement-based therapies, social workers can offer more effective support to children with ASD, addressing challenges that traditional methods might overlook.

Bringing the Body Back into Care: A Call to Action

As we continue to evolve our practices, it’s imperative to embrace interventions that honor the whole person. Movement-based therapies offer a promising avenue to enrich our approaches, ensuring that we meet the diverse needs of those we serve.

For a deeper dive into the study, visit PsyPost’s article, or better yet, see the article itself, https://doi-org.proxy.bib.uottawa.ca/10.1080/09638288.2025.2465600

How Running Helps Transform Addiction Recovery: A Carnal Sociological Perspective

Can running help you recover from addiction? While it’s common to hear that exercise supports sobriety, few studies explore how recovery is actually lived through the body. In this blog post, we dive into a groundbreaking study that takes a carnal sociological approach—literally running alongside people in recovery—to uncover how movement, pain, pleasure, and place shape the healing process.

What Is Carnal Sociology?

Carnal sociology is an approach that centers the body as a way of knowing. It demands that researchers don’t just observe from the sidelines—they participate. In this case, that meant conducting running interviews with people recovering from addiction, capturing real-time sensations, emotions, and social shifts that occur as bodies move through space.

Key Finding: Recovery Is Lived Through the Body

The study, led by Stephanie Bogue Kerr and Nicolas Moreau, challenges mainstream models of addiction that frame recovery as either a moral failure or a brain disease. Instead, it adopts a relational perspective that views addiction as a response to social disconnection. Recovery, then, becomes a re-connection—with the body, with others, and with the world.

By focusing on the runner’s habitus—a concept borrowed from sociologist Pierre Bourdieu—the study traces how embodied routines like training runs, community runs, and races help reconfigure identity, stability, and hope.

5 Ways Running Reshapes the Recovery Journey

The authors use Wacquant’s “Six S’s” to structure their analysis—categories that highlight how habits, environments, emotions, and sensations work together to shape lived experience. Here’s how running helped transform recovery:

1. Suffering: Channeling Pain into Discipline

Participants described how addiction consumed them physically and emotionally. Hangovers, withdrawal, and anxiety gave way—slowly—to shin splints, sore muscles, and blisters. Running didn’t eliminate suffering; it reshaped it. The pain of the run became a symbol of resilience and structure. Over time, running replaced addiction as the organizing principle of their lives.

“You become more of one thing and less of the other,” one participant shared.

2. Sentience: Feeling Alive Again

Addiction dulls the senses. Running reawakened them. Participants spoke about feeling reconnected to nature, noticing birds, rivers, and the sound of their own breath. One called it the “universal heartbeat”—a reminder that life is happening all around you. For many, this sensory re-engagement was deeply spiritual and meditative.

“I just lit up. I was like, this feels amazing,” said one runner.

3. Skills: Building a Life Through Running

Running became a framework for acquiring life skills. Training plans taught goal setting, time management, and the importance of rest. Races became milestones that marked not just physical endurance, but emotional healing. Many participants used these skills to support others in recovery or pivot into careers in fitness or counseling.

“Running teaches you structure, but also acceptance,” explained one interviewee.

4. Situatedness: Reclaiming Place and Identity

Running routes weren’t just exercise paths—they were stages for personal transformation. Participants revisited neighborhoods they once associated with using drugs, reclaiming them through new rituals. One woman described her favorite trail as her “bar,” a place to open up emotionally just like others might over a drink. These physical spaces became embedded with new meaning and memories.

5. Symbolism: Races as Rituals of Renewal

Running was more than a habit; it was a powerful metaphor. Marathons symbolized the long, unpredictable path of recovery—full of highs, lows, and the need to keep moving. The finish line wasn’t just the end of a race—it was a visible, public moment of transformation. Crossing it meant reclaiming one’s place in society, no longer hidden by shame.

“My place in the world was just perfect,” one runner said, tearfully recalling a race’s end.

Why Running Works (But Not for Everyone)

The study found that running is most helpful for people who had prior positive experiences with physical activity, especially in childhood. This raises important equity concerns. Not everyone has access to sport growing up, especially those from marginalized communities. So while running can be a powerful recovery tool, it’s not a universal solution.

It’s also worth noting that exercise addiction is a real risk. Many participants raised the concern themselves. The key distinction was whether running added to their lives or began to consume it. For most, running remained a “safe space”—a way to stay grounded without replacing one addiction with another.

Implications for Recovery Programs

Here’s why this research matters for addiction treatment and recovery services:

• Integrate the body: Traditional recovery often neglects the body. This study shows that movement-based practices like running can help reconfigure not just health, but identity and relationships.

• Use relational interventions: Running in community offered participants emotional support, belonging, and accountability.

• Acknowledge nonlinearity: Recovery isn’t a straight path. Like training, it includes setbacks, recalibrations, and learning how to cope with uncertainty.

Recovery isn’t just about quitting substances. It’s about learning how to live in a body again, how to navigate suffering, and how to find joy. Running provided that opportunity.

Final Thoughts: Running Toward Connection

“Running and Stumbling to Recovery” doesn’t romanticize recovery—it reveals its messiness, its pain, and its potential. The study invites us to rethink what healing looks like: not just through sobriety chips or therapy sessions, but through sweat, sore knees, and sunrises on a trail.

If you or someone you love is in recovery, maybe the next step isn’t just forward—it’s a stride, a jog, a run. And in that motion, a reconnection to self, others, and the world.

Read the full article here: http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/1467-9566.70052

keywords: addiction recovery, running and sobriety, exercise for addiction, embodied recovery, carnal sociology, substance use healing, running therapy, sobriety and fitness, mental health and movement, trauma and embodiment

Why the Body Matters in Social Work: Embracing a Carnal Practice

In today’s fast-paced, bureaucratized practice landscape, the body is often missing from the picture of social work. Despite its centrality in lived experience, the physical, emotional, and sensate realities of practitioners and service users are largely ignored in both theory and practice. In a recent article, For a Carnal Social Work, I make a case for why this omission must end.

Drawing from a wide-ranging review of literature, I explore how the body is represented—or more often, erased—within social work. The article culminates in a powerful call to reframe the discipline through a carnal lens, emphasizing embodiment, intersubjectivity, and the interplay between personal experience and structural forces. This blog post distills her key findings and argues that a carnal approach to social work is not just overdue—it’s essential.

The Silent Body in Social Work Literature

A striking finding from this review is how infrequently the body appears in social work literature—not as metaphor, but as lived, physical reality. While theorists like Foucault, Goffman, and Bourdieu have informed social work’s academic underpinnings, their influence has not translated into concrete attention to bodies in practice. This omission reflects a broader critique within the social sciences: the body is theorized, but rarely felt.

Although the profession espouses a holistic, person-in-environment perspective, this framework often excludes the most immediate aspect of the person—their body. The review reveals how social work continues to prioritize cognitive and discursive analyses over flesh-and-blood realities. This creates a disciplinary blind spot that marginalizes the full spectrum of human experience.

Missing Bodies, Missing Contexts

I also uncovers significant gaps in representation. Bodies from outside Anglo-Saxon contexts are largely absent, with only isolated studies from countries like Nigeria and Ethiopia addressing unique embodied experiences shaped by distinct socio-economic and cultural conditions.

Additionally, the embodiment of colonialism, racism, and linguistic power remains underexplored. Few studies engage with Indigenous worldviews or the bodily impacts of systemic oppression. Only one article examines the embodiment of language and the dominance of English in global social work discourse. Similarly, gendered and queer bodies—especially cis men and LGBTQ+ individuals—receive limited attention.

From an anti-oppressive standpoint, this narrow representation is deeply problematic. Social work must account for how different bodies move through the world, how they’re marginalized, and how they resist. Ignoring these differences undermines the discipline’s commitment to equity and inclusion.

The Practicing Body: A Silent Partner in Intervention

Despite these omissions, social workers do use their bodies in practice—intuitively, informally, and sometimes deliberately. Whether it’s calming a distressed client through posture, offering a grounding touch, or sensing tension in a room, the body is always present.

Yet, these embodied dimensions of practice are rarely documented or theorized. This silence is especially limiting given the strong emotional and relational stakes involved in bodywork. Without clear standards or frameworks, practitioners may feel unequipped—or even discouraged—to draw upon embodied strategies.

This is a critical gap. Bodywork often requires a strong therapeutic alliance to manage emotions that surface unexpectedly. Without guidance or institutional support, practitioners must navigate these dynamics alone, increasing the risk of harm or ethical breaches. Social work needs a framework that legitimizes and supports embodied practice.

Toward a Definition: What Is the Body in Social Work?

In synthesizing the diverse and often conflicting representations of the body in the literature, I offer a new, integrative definition:

“The body is the material site within which forces and experiences culminate, building upon and in relation to one another over time, entailing physiological, sensate, cognitive, intersubjective, sociocultural, systemic, structural, and environmental dynamics.”

This definition resists oversimplification. It affirms that the body is not just a biological shell, nor merely a vehicle for identity, but a site of complex, layered interactions. It invites social workers to consider how lived experience, power structures, and sensory awareness intersect within the body.

Enter Carnal Social Work

Building on this definition, I propose the concept of carnal social work—a practice grounded in the understanding that bodies are central to social work encounters. Drawing from Wacquant’s (2015) carnal sociology, this approach foregrounds vulnerability, affect, skill, and power as they manifest in the body.

In Wacquant’s (2015) words, humans are “sensate, suffering, skilled, sedimented, and situated creature[s] of flesh and blood.” (p.6) A carnal social work embraces this complexity. It does not treat embodiment as a personal issue to be managed or transcended. Instead, it sees the body as a point of contact where individual experiences and social forces converge.

Crucially, this approach does not collapse into individualism. On the contrary, it insists that attending to the body requires attention to the broader systems that shape it—from neoliberal policy to institutional power dynamics. In this way, carnal social work reclaims the body as a political and relational site.

Reflexivity, Habitus, and the Knowing Body

Carnal social work also challenges dominant notions of reflexivity. While social work rightly emphasizes reflexive practice, current models often prioritize cognitive self-awareness over embodied knowing. Practitioners are taught to analyze situations, but not necessarily to attune to their own bodily responses.

I suggest that habitus, as theorized by Bourdieu and Wacquant (1992), offer a more holistic framework. Habitus refers to the embodied history of an individual—their dispositions, ways of being, and unconscious patterns shaped by social context. Using habitus as a reflexive tool allows social workers to notice what arises in their bodies and trace these responses back to broader social forces.

This deepens reflexivity. It allows practitioners to consider how their own embodiment—shaped by gender, race, class, culture, and more—affects their practice. It also encourages them to remain present with clients in a way that is grounded, responsive, and accountable.

From Concept to Practice: Challenges and Opportunities

Of course, implementing carnal social work is not without its challenges. Institutional settings often privilege efficiency, documentation, and standardized assessments over relational, embodied engagement. The rise of the “computer social worker,” as Phillips (2019) calls it, reinforces mechanistic approaches that strip away the nuance of human experience.

In such environments, carnal practice can feel subversive. It demands time, presence, and vulnerability. It pushes against the grain of managerialism and demands that practitioners be fully human in their work. For some, this may feel risky. For others, it may be a profound relief.

Yet, I argue that precisely because social workers operate at the nexus of individual need and structural constraint, they are uniquely positioned to embody a more humane, relational mode of practice. A carnal approach offers tools for resisting dehumanization—both in ourselves and in our systems.

The Future of Carnal Social Work

The shift toward a carnal paradigm in social work will require more than theoretical buy-in. It calls for changes in education, supervision, research, and policy. Practitioners need training in embodied awareness and ethical bodywork. Researchers need to document embodied practice and diversify the range of bodies represented in literature. Institutions must create space for presence, slowness, and vulnerability.

Most of all, we must be willing to feel. To notice how our bodies respond in the room. To recognize that those feelings are not distractions, but data—guides that help us understand the worlds we and our clients inhabit.

In the end, a carnal social work is not just about the body. It’s about what the body reveals: about pain and resilience, about oppression and resistance, about connection and care. It asks us not to retreat into abstraction, but to lean into the messy, glorious materiality of life.

keywords: body in social work, embodied practice, carnal social work, reflexivity in social work, Wacquant carnal sociology, habitus and social work, somatic awareness, embodied reflexivity, neoliberalism in social work, person-in-environment critique

Click the link to acces the full article.

Women’s Work

In Québec, public sector workers in health care and education are nearing an agreement with the provincial government after weeks of strike action. In the throws of the pandemic, these workers were praised as heroes but in recent weeks, they have been scolded by this same government for standing up and demanding better conditions, not just for themselves, but for all of us.

Historically, care work has been un/underpaid work performed by women. A recent study by Québec’s Institut de recherche et d’informations socio-économiques found that this gender pay gap remains entrenched within our social services. Women make up 82% of the workforce in healthcare and education. They are also paid 24% less than their counterparts in the government’s male-dominated public services (namely, Hydro Québec, Lotto Québec and the Société des alcools du Québec). It is estimated that pay equity would cost the government 5.9 billion dollars a year, and obviously, they’d rather not. They would prefer to pay lip service to their heroism than compensate them fairly for the highly skilled work they do. They would prefer to continue begging retired nurses and teachers to return to the field, rather than ask themselves why people keep leaving.

We have normalized poor public services. We need to demand better for the people who care for us, and for ourselves. Our health care system is crumbling and we’re watching it happen.

I’m reaching out to my MNA to express my concerns. Maybe if enough emails are sent, it’ll make some difference…

References:

https://aptsq.com/en/current-issues/pay-inequity/

https://www.ledevoir.com/societe/742662/l-egalite-femmes-hommes-en-presque-surplace

#paygap #womenswork #healthcare #Canada #apts #frontcommun #quebec #canada #heros

Unlimited Growth Increases the Divide

Building in Gastown, Vancouver. The tenant in the top right apartment was hanging out the window smoking a cigarette till I pulled out my phone. We waved at each other, as they dipped inside for me to take the photo.

As I prepare to begin writing up what I have discovered about addiction over the last three years, I am struck by how little we talk about the social context of this problem.

I was struck today by a story about a lawsuit brought by the Seattle public school board against big tech companies. The lawsuit claims that social media are key contributors to the youth mental health crisis and that they have been deliberately engineered to create a dependence (Reuters, 2023). The mental health problems created online impact upon students, which in turn requires schools to dedicate time and resources to addressing these needs. Social media companies profit off their ubiquity, while the education system (along with families) bear the brunt of the consequences. If we truly valued education or mental health, we would not expect nor want teachers to take this on.

This is not unlike the implication of Purdue Pharma in the opioid crisis, which cost more than 1600 British Columbians their lives in the first nine months of 2022 (BC Gov News, 2022). In the US, a lawsuit alleged that the company put profits ahead of people’s health and wellbeing, resulting in an 8 billion dollar settlement with the US Justice Department in 2020, and criminal charges against the Sackler family (US Dept of Justice, 2020).

In 2018, the BC government began a class-action lawsuit against five pharmaceutical companies (including Purdue Pharma). They settled quickly, with Purdue Pharma paying 150 million dollars to BC to help in covering health care costs (BC Attorney General, 2022), a drop in the bucket considering the estimated 5 billion dollars that the crisis has cost Canada in lost productivity alone (University of Alberta, 2019). If we valued community, we would not expect municipalities to emend corporate irresponsibility.

Although discourse is slowly shifting, we are quick to individualize the problem of addiction. It is easier to reduce the issue to one of willpower or of disease, both of which situate the problem within the individual. As we begin to talk more openly about mental health, it is vital that we consider the wider social context of addiction.

Interestingly, the most consistent theme that has come out of my interviews with people who have recovered from substance use is the importance of connection to oneself, to others and to the world. Applying a wider lens to this individual experience, if we are really going to address the problem of addiction, we have to do so from this same perspective, by making connections between the individual and society.

References:

BC Attorney General (2022). https://news.gov.bc.ca/releases/2022AG0044-001031

BC Government News (2022). https://news.gov.bc.ca/releases/2022PSSG0069-001656

Reuters (2023). https://www.reuters.com/technology/seattle-public-schools-blame-tech-giants-social-media-harm-lawsuit-2023-01-08/

University of Alberta (2019). https://www.ualberta.ca/folio/2019/10/opioid-crisis-has-cost-canada-nearly-5-billion-in-lost-productivity-u-of-a-student-finds.html#:~:text=Folio-,Opioid%20crisis%20has%20cost%20Canada%20nearly%20%245%20billion%20in%20lost,than%2011%2C000%20lives%20since%202016.

US Department of Justice (2020). https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/justice-department-announces-global-resolution-criminal-and-civil-investigations-opioid

Gaslight

Since I started my private practice two years ago, I've had to pay careful attention to social media trends in mental health messaging. This is increasingly the language people use, in session and in life, to describe emotional and psychological pains and discomforts. These are the terms they mobilize to articulate difficulties in their relationships with others.

Social media content can be viral not only in the breadth of their spread, but also in its invasive nature. In the early days of COVID, mixed messages circulated at lightning speed. We didn't know what to believe, or who to listen to. In the early days of COVID, public health officials and politicians scrambled to adapt measures and recommendations to what little we knew about a new virus. There is no doubt that they got some things wrong, but they acted on the information they had from specialists on infectious disease. Although little was known about the virus, we learned a lot very quickly,  in part because of the degree of contagion and the potential severity of the illness.

As complicated as it was finding reliable sources in regard to COVID, it is significantly harder with something as intangible as mental health. While social media can bring people together around shared challenges and experiences, issues of mental health can also fall victim to polarizing, simplistic, click-bait content in the same way everything else does . The spread and impact of such messages is more subtle than the COVID numbers that framed everyday life for awhile. We consume these messages and they influence us. Tourette's syndrome, a rare disorder with an estimated prevalence of 1% (Roessner, Hoekstra & Rothenberger, 2011) has seen a recent spike in diagnosis, which some physicians have speculated may be related to continuous exposure to TikTok videos about the disorder. This has led some researchers to suggest the need to recognize a new "Tourette-like disorder" that spreads through social media, with symptoms consistent with those of the influencers the adolescents followed (Müller-Vahl, Pisarenko, Jakubovski & Fremer, 2022).

The viral content builds us, as much as we build the content.

In Canada, access to mental health professionals is limited. We have begun in recent years to speak more openly about mental health issues, but if the resources and conversation is dominated by what circulates on social media, we are not doing ourselves any favours.

"Gaslighting" was just declared the word of the year by Merriam-Webster. This is not surprising to me. They found a 1740% increase of searches for its definition on their site in 2022 (NPR, 2022). I hear it so much in my sessions to describe relationship dynamics that I think a lot about how people understand it and how they use it.

When I first heard the term, I recalled an old play that I'd read in theatre school called "Gaslight" by Patrick Hamilton (1938). I remembered little of the play, but traces of its elaborate psychological manipulation remained with me. I remembered being deeply disturbed by it.

This is in fact where the term "gaslighting" originated from, so I reread the play. A man murders an elderly woman in her home, in search of valuable jewels he knows to be hidden there but never found. Years later and newly married, he returns to the scene of the crime as a resident of that home. Over the course of the play, we discover that he manipulated this woman into marrying him because she had the means to purchase the house. Every night, he continues his careful search for the jewels,  simultaneously exercising various methods that control and alter his wife's perception of reality. He has the house, so he doesn't need her anymore.

What strikes me about the contrast between the play and what seems to be the popular use of the term today, is that in the play, there really is no relationship between the husband and wife. She existed only to acquire the house for him. She is not a person to him, she's a tool until she's an inconvenience.

Today, gaslighting is employed to label relationship dynamics. In my experience, this comes with the significant risk of shutting down conversation about different perspectives and ways of understanding. Relationships are complicated because they involve two different people sharing in life experiences together. Differences in every day experiences are part of that. It takes energy, patience, openness and compassion to have conversations about difference. This is particularly difficult when we are angry, hurt or unhappy.

I am not suggesting that gaslighting does not exist. There are, without question, people who go to extremes to control and manipulate those around them. Most people are not gaslighters though. A much more common problem is difficulty in communicating thoughts and feelings. I'm suggesting that the dynamics of relationships deserve careful, nuanced thought. This wasn't required of the wife character in the play, because there was no relationship in the first place. In fact, she discovers that they were not married in the first place, as her husband was already married to another woman, rendering their marriage null and void.

I encourage those facing challenges in their relationships to reach out for professional support. An encouraging trend that I've noticed in the last two years is the number of young couples seeking support early in their relationship. They are hoping to anticipate difficulties, facilitate growth and foster a deeper understanding of one another. Presumably, normalizing discussions about mental health has played a role in this. Mindful engagement with any social media content can expose us to new possibilities for engagement and growth. It can be a powerful tool for connection, rather than a way of driving us apart.

Click here to access the Canadian Mental Health Association's petition for universal mental health and substance use services:

https://www.actformentalhealth.ca/

Petition for Universal Mental Health & Substance Use Health

Flying to Montreal days after the mandatory masking on planes came into effect in 2020. My friend broke out the sewing machine to make one for me since there weren’t any masks for sale in our small town. I was one of nine people on the flight from Vancouver to Montreal.

Over the last few years, there have been important shifts in how we talk about mental health. Even before the pandemic, it had become less taboo for people to talk about how they experience life’s challenges. Over the course of the two years, while we were isolated from one another, we collectively experienced uncertainty. We engaged with mortality, we experienced loneliness. We felt trapped, stagnant. Everyone faced challenges specific to the precarities of their own lives, but we also shared in the experience of abrupt changes and threats to life as we knew it.

The pandemic shone a light on what health care workers have long known: Our health care system is fragile. Emergency rooms were beyond capacity long before COVID hit. Living conditions in long term care centres in Quebec have been intermittently raised in the news for years, notably when the 93 year old mother of Gilles Duceppe (former leader of the Bloc Québécois) died of hypothermia after being locked outdoors after a fire alarm went off in her private seniors residence (Laframboise, 2020). That the mother of such a well-respected politician could die in such a way foreshadowed what was to come when COVID hit the long-term care centres. Our public health care system should ensure that no one dies in such conditions.

It should also ensure that those who suffer from health issues, be they physical or mental, have access to treatment.

Under the Canada Health Act, only mental health services provided in a hospital are covered under provincial health insurance (CMHA, 2022). This causes a number of problems. First, hospital psychiatric units have limited resources that are stretched beyond their limits. These units often attend to the acute needs of people with complex psychiatric illness, but they rely on family and community partners to collaborate for long-term support. Meanwhile, ER overflows with people seeking emergency support for suicide risk. They may sit in ER for days before being discharged. They may or may not be referred to mental health resources in the community.

They may or may not have needed to be in ER had there been access to therapeutic support before the crisis moment.

Unfortunately, on a systemic and structural level, we don’t treat mental health issues like we do physical health. A lot of lip service is paid to its importance, but still little is done to improve access to resources. We place responsibility upon those struggling to take care of themselves, offering them little concrete support. It would be absurd to encourage people with broken arms to apply “self care” measures from social media, but this is how we continue to treat mental health.

Some of us are fortunate enough to access private psychotherapy, but we are a privileged few. We also shouldn't have to. We are indirectly paying for our mental health, be it through substance use, physical illness or loss of productivity. We are also indirectly paying for the mental health crisis through what is known as the revolving door between the emergency room, the streets and prisons.

We have normalized receiving patchwork care in an overstressed system. We have normalized burnout in health professionals. For two years, we kept a distance from friends and family to protect one another, and to protect our fragile system. The best way of supporting the heroes that we've praised, the essential workers, is to support them in their fight for a system that has the capacity to care for us.

The Canadian Mental Health Association is asking for the public's support in pushing the federal government to 1) Create a permanent Mental Health and Substance Use transfer to fund mental health care; 2) Create a Canada Universal Mental Health and Substance Act to ensure equitable access to treatment across Canada; 3) Fully decriminalize simple possession of illegal substances and invest in harm-reduction, treatment and recovery services.

Historically, our social programs have been born out of times of crisis (Guest, 1995). Let this be no different.

Click here for the petition: https://www.actformentalhealth.ca/

References:

Canadian Mental Health Association (2022). ACT for Mental Health. Federal Plan for Universal Mental Health and Substance Use.

Guest, D. (1995). Histoire de la sécurité sociale au Canada. Montréal, QC: Éditions Boréal.

https://globalnews.ca/news/6435607/gilles-duceppe-mother-death-lawsuit-anniversary/

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/coroner-report-long-term-care-deaths-1.6454935

Oreo

Even after two years here, the view from the beach a few blocks from home regularly stops me in my tracks. I feel like I’m running into a postcard as the sun sets over the water with the mountains in the background.

I run without music so I can hear the waves crash on the beach. I watch for herons and seals. I notice the first signs of snow on the North Shore mountains. As I cut through Stanley Park, I’m struck by the silence. I hear my feet on the gravel and notice the stillness around me.

Nature is so close and escaping into it seems to be ingrained into the culture of the city. Connecting to nature, to something bigger than yourself seems to be a reoccurring theme in my interviews with people who have recovered from substance use. I wonder if this theme would be as present in other places.

View from the Burrard bridge.

Yet surviving in cities requires a certain degree of disconnection. Unfiltered, the barrage of textures, sounds, sights and smells is too much to take in. There are too many people, too much movement. We become so effective at shutting out stimuli we don’t even realize we’re doing it.

I think about this a lot here.

Vancouver has the unfortunate contradiction of consistently holding a place amongst the world’s most liveable cities, while simultaneously grappling with its reputation as a city with a complex problem with homelessness.

Photos of missing persons are posted on the Facebook groups of the Downtown Eastside every day. Tents dot the city streets and parks. I regularly question if the people passed out on the sidewalks need help or if they’re sleeping. Calling for help each time I was concerned could be a full time job.

The other day as I walked home, a woman held out a leaflet to me. I hardly looked at her, and nearly hurried by without acknowledging her. I slowed when I heard her say, “Please, my son is missing.” I accepted the pamphlet without saying a word. I couldn’t imagine her suffering and could think of nothing to say. Importantly though, I took the time to engage in the smallest of interactions with a mother desperately searching for her son.

A few days later, a woman sitting in that same spot called out to me. “Do you want an Oreo?” I smiled and said, “No, thank you,” while reaching into my bag of groceries. I asked if she wanted an apple. “Sure, but only if you take the Oreo.” It sounded like a fair trade and I told her so.

That woman taught me that there are Neopolitan Oreos. It may not be a lesson I needed to learn, but I’m glad I took a moment to connect with someone who reached out.

Out of My Head

I spent a year living in Seoul, South Korea in the early days of blogs. It was my first time outside of North America, first experience in a place where I didn’t speak the language. Everything was new to me and I packed my observations and reflections on cultural differences into my weekly blog post. I shared my disorientation with my friends and family back in Canada, as I tried to make sense of a different way of seeing and experiencing the world.

I tried to keep it up upon my return to Montreal, but found I had little to say once I’d adjusted to life back home.

I believe I again have things to say.

Next week will mark my two year anniversary as a resident of Vancouver. I now describe the experience of being here as a sort of chronic culture shock. I notice differences and wonder what they means for the city and more broadly, for society.

I am a doctoral student researching addiction in Vancouver, BC. This particular lens is certainly part of my efforts to understand life in this city.

I am also a practicing social worker and psychotherapist. I closely follow how conversations about mental health spread and evolve. I have many thoughts, concerns and questions that refuse to fit neatly into social media posts, so I’m creating a space to get them out of my head.

Contemplating the contradiction of expensive coffee on East Hastings.