An act of kindness helped kick off Mental Health Week in Salmon Arm.
With Mental Health Awareness Month already underway (May 6-31), Mental Health Week began Monday, May 6. The Canadian Mental Health Association’s (CMHA) theme for the week is A Call to be Kind, emphasizing that we all have the capacity to be compassionate, and how acts of compassion and kindness can make an enormous difference among individuals and society as a whole.
“When we are kind, we have more understanding and empathy for people and I think that’s really something we really need in our society right now,” said CHMA Shuswap-Revelstoke’s Denise Butler.
On Monday morning, May 6, Butler and CMHA’s Jackie Chanda were at Dragonfly Wellness Centre in downtown Salmon Arm where they were on the receiving end of kindness in the form of a $3,300 donation shared by Dragonfly’s Dr. Saira Sabzaali and fellow health practitioners Chelsea Harris, Deborah Haukedal, Monique Peck, Texas Peck and Faizan Sabzaali. The money was raised over the past year through Dragonfly’s drop in/by donation meditation sessions held from 6 to 7 p.m. on Wednesdays.
“CMHA was there for me personally when I was going through a difficult time with my own mental health and after that I got really interested in volunteering so I served on the board for a few years in the Vancouer Fraser branch,” said Sabzaali. “Now every city I go to, I look at how I can connect with CMHA. And I think what CMHA stands for is what Dragonfly Wellness stands for, helping people find what is already in them…
“I just love… how CMHA is really helped with the whole stigma piece over the last 20 years, just the way that society looks at mental health, I think a lot of that change is because of the work CMHA has done across the country.”
CMHA Shuswap-Revelstoke is hosting events at 10 a.m. throughout the week.
For more information, visit shuswap-revelstoke.cmha.bc.ca or the CMHA Shuswap-Revelstoke page on Facebook/Instagram.
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