Each January for the past six years, Bell has promoted their Let’s Talk initiative, which is a campaign to help end stigmatization around mental illness. This year, the event falls on January 25. Since the initiative began, UFV’s counselling department has held an annual interactive event to coincide with it.
Counselling department head Tia Noble, who has been a counsellor at UFV for six years and the department head for three, said the Bell Let’s Talk campaign “is focused on mental health and that is our area of expertise. We’ve been running this event since the initiative was created.”
So what exactly is Bell Let’s Talk day? It’s one day out of each year where Bell focuses on promoting the destigmatization of mental health. This year Bell has promoted the event by offering five simple ways to help: being mindful of your language, being kind, educating yourself, listening and asking, and most importantly, talking about it.
While promoting and educating students on the same ideas, Bell Let’s Talk at UFV is a little different. Bell usually focuses on campaigning all over social media, but at UFV counsellors set up tables to make the day as interactive as possible. From 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. counsellors and volunteers will set up at both the Abbotsford and Chilliwack campuses with true and false games, chocolate, and “items like bracelets and buttons just to keep some really physical tactile materials for students to take with them to remember about mental health,” Noble explained.
There will be various counsellors as well as volunteers from the Peer Resource and Leadership Centre and peer leaders available to educate students as much as possible, and to offer casual, open conversation about the topic of mental health. The focus of this event is to specifically open up discussion for students about mental health but also “to continue to help each other and to respect and treat every human being with dignity, also to peel back the layers of judgement, about mental health issues, challenges, or illness,” said Noble.
As far as tips for helping students maintain a healthy lifestyle and healthy state of mind, Noble suggested “reminding ourselves to keep perspective, because when we are under a lot of stress and our mental health is wavering we can go into tunnel vision.”
Along with regular exercise and sleep, Noble also suggested staying connected, whether that be with friends, family, someone close to you, or just anyone you are comfortable with. Even the use of social media can be an effective way to stay connected and interact with others, and that’s what Bell Let’s Talk day is all about: staying connected, utilizing social media, and spreading the word to help make the topic of mental illness comfortable for everyone. That’s also what the UFV counselling department is trying to achieve on January 25: educating, interacting, and “connecting with each other as humans and as equals.”
