Comfort & Joy Holiday Appeal - Still Time to Donate!
The St. Joe’s community is showing a strong commitment to our Hospital through our Comfort & Joy appeal! Already we have received close to $60,000 to help St. Joe’s purchase life-saving equipment, to enhance our patient care areas, and to fund vital healthcare research! There is still time to contribute by clicking here and making a donation online. All donations received before midnight December 31 will receive a 2012 tax receipt.
Our Founders’ values of dignity, respect, and compassionate care have endured the test of time, and have strengthened the lives of patients and their families during challenging situations. With your support, St. Joe’s will continue its 122-year legacy of caring.
Together We Did It!
Here at St. Joe’s, we’re creating a mental health treatment program to specifically help adolescents and teens who are living with mental illness. With this goal in mind, we recently piloted a new running therapy study and the preliminary results are very promising. We hope to extend the program and help even more youth but we need funds to do this.
Recently, St. Joseph’s Running Therapy For Youth Mental Health project attracted 793 votes in the Aviva Community Fund Challenge. By exceeding the 500 vote threshold, our project has qualified as an ‘At Risk Youth’ project finalist! Now it is up to the Aviva judges to decide which projects will receive grants for 2013. Thank you for your participation and your support of St. Joe’s. We couldn’t have done it without you!
Aviva is a well-known insurance provider who wants to give back to Canadian communities by supporting projects that make a positive change. We know that our running therapy group is doing just that!
Youth who live with mental illness are more limited than adults in terms of their treatment options. Because of their age and ongoing brain development, youth often experience side effects from the medications that adults use. But the running therapy program – aptly called Team Unbreakable – is a novel non-pharmacological approach and has demonstrated some fascinating results in its early phases.
The Team includes youth, mental health practitioners and running coaches who participate in a 13-week running group that collects, monitors and examines the results of running as a treatment for anxiety and depression. The study strives to build resilient youth, fighting back in the face of mental illness and the stigma associated with it. The Team will make them…strong, united, unbreakable!
Through Team Unbreakable, these youth meet others with similar life challenges and together, they learn coping strategies for the issues they face. Not only does Team Unbreakable help to alleviate the symptoms of depression or anxiety, it gives participants a chance to see the benefits of exercise while knowing that the study they are involved with has the power to influence the future of medical care for youth mental health in Canada.