Promoting Mental Health for Disasters & Community Mental Health Promotion
A broad community-based approach is the best way to prepare and improve community member’s social and mental health needs. This approach includes all areas of a community to meet and improve the mental health of those that live in them. This can help to prepare, respond, and recover from disasters or emergencies.
These are resources and tools that can be printed or distributed electronically to improve the mental health well-being within families and communities:
- Preparing for a disaster or emergency
- Responding to a disaster or emergency
- Recovery from a disaster or emergency
These are learning opportunities that can help to build mental health well-being:
- D-Stress - Stress self-management in challenging times
- Emergency Preparedness (E-Prep) - Learn ways to prepare emotionally, socially, and physically to help prepare for an emergency or a disaster.
- Psychological First Aid (PFA) - Learn ways to provide practical support to people during a disaster or emergency.
- Psychosocial Disaster Learning Series - A chance to review your past PFA training.
- Wellness Exchange - Learn 5 ways to support your mental wellbeing.
Mental health promotion learning opportunities can help to improve or maintain mental health and well-being. If you are interested, please participate in some learning opportunities and consider becoming a facilitator to help others! You can also find these sessions under Help in Tough Times under Mental Health Online Sessions.
If you are a health professional and think some of our resources and learning opportunities might be helpful in your work, please visit the information available for health professionals.
Tell us about yourself and the resources you are accessing by taking our short survey!
Questions or concerns, email us at: hpdip.mh.earlyid@ahs.ca
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Preparing for a Disaster or Emergency
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- Preparing Emotionally for a Disasters or Emergencies
- Helping Children and Teens Prepare Emotionally for a Disasters or Emergency
- Preparing Emotionally for a Disaster or Emergency: Information for Older Adults
We would really like to hear from you on how you are using this resource. Please take the time to provide us with as much information as you feel comfortable with providing!
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Responding to a Disaster or Emergency
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Here are some tips and resources for responding to a disaster or emergency including tools for self-care and managing stress.
- Responding to Disaster or Emergency
- Responding to Customers Affected by Disaster
- Helping Children and Teens Respond to a Disasters or Emergency
- Disaster Stress and Self-care During a Disaster or Emergency
We would really like to hear from you on how you are using this resource. Please take the time to provide us with as much information as you feel comfortable with providing!
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Recovery After a Disaster
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After a disaster or emergency has occurred it is important to address the recovery phase. Recovery is different for different age groups and can be different when addressing the community as a whole.
- Recovery After a Disaster or Emergency
- Helping Children and Teens Recover from a Disasters or Emergency
- Helping Seniors Recover and Stay Well after a Disaster or Emergency: Tips for Families and Caregivers
- Substance Use After a Disaster or Emergency
- Helping You Recover and Stay Well after a Disaster or Emergency
- Having Trouble Coping After a Disaster or Emergency
- Supporting Families After a Disaster or Emergency
- Door-to-Door Outreach Toolkit: A Strategy For Building Community Connections & Wellness Post-Disaster
We would really like to hear from you on how you are using this resource. Please take the time to provide us with as much information as you feel comfortable with providing!
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Pandemic and Mental Health
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There are some ideas around practical preparedness, emotional preparedness, and some additional information that can help you to prepare for a pandemic and the Stepped Care Model as it applies specifically to a pandemic:
A public health emergency, like the COVID-19 outbreak, can be stressful, especially for people who have a pre-existing medical condition, who are traveling, or are separated from friends and family members at home and abroad. This resource provides some helpful tips for you to use when dealing with challenging situation:
Children react, in part, on what they see from the adults around them. Coping with COVID-19 calmly and confidently, can help you support your child. Here is a resource that you can use for some ideas to support your child:
We would really like to hear from you on how you are using this resource. Please take the time to provide us with as much information as you feel comfortable with providing!
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Community & Mental Health
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Social Isolation and Loneliness
Social Isolation happens when a persona has little or not contact with other people. Isolation may be over a short or long period. It’s a physical state of not being around others. Loneliness is a feeling of being alone, empty, or separated from others. It’s an emotional state. It can be felt even when we are surrounded by others. Additional general information is available through our poster.
A toolkit that explains more about social isolation and loneliness, who is at risk, impacts, community factors, and recommendations for organizations and communities can be accessed by contacting us for helpful toolkit.
Other resources that we have are to share and increase community action to address social isolation & loneliness. One way to do this is to host a screening of documentary and include panelists to have a discussion.
We would really like to hear from you on how you are using this resource. Please take the time to provide us with as much information as you feel comfortable with providing!
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Resources
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Helping children and teens prepare emotionally for a disaster. (412 KB) (pdf)
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Preparing emotionally for disaster. (378 KB) (pdf)
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Responding to disaster. (356 KB) (pdf)
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Helping children and teens respond to a disaster. (356 KB) (pdf)
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Mental Health Promotion Theories and Evidence.pdf (1.02 MB) (pdf)
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Recovering from disaster. (399 KB) (pdf)
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Helping children and teens recover from a disaster. (423 KB) (pdf)
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Recovery from disaster supporting families.pdf (627 KB) (pdf)
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Trouble coping after a disaster-postcard. (135 KB) (pdf)
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Substance use after a disaster. (269 KB) (pdf)
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Preparing emotionally for a pandemic-practical information. (120 KB) (pdf)
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Pandemic Stepped Care Model Overview.pdf (1.03 MB) (pdf)
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COVID-19 and your mental health.docx (806 KB) (docx)
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Coping in a pandemic-information for children families (153 KB) (pdf)
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Social isolation and loneliness-poster.pdf (830 KB) (pdf)
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Social isolation and loneliness-toolkit.pdf (3.71 MB) (pdf)
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Self-Care Tookit Guide for individuals.pdf (4.98 MB) (pdf)
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Self-Care Tookit Guide for organizations.pdf (4.99 MB) (pdf)
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Self-Care Workbook for individuals.pdf (2.47 MB) (pdf)
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Self-Care Workbook for organizations.pdf (2.72 MB) (pdf)
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Self-care for Personal Wellness.pptx (4.83 MB) (pptx)
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Self-care for Organizational Wellness.pptx (7.57 MB) (pptx)
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Post Disaster Door-to-door Outreach Toolkit.pdf (3.07 MB) (pdf)
AHS D-Stress Box Breathing Video
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<b>Instructions</b> - click 'Read more' for full instructions<br> - Begin by letting all of the air out of your lungs. <br> - Breathe in for 4 seconds as you follow the green dot up the left side of the box.<br> - Hold or pause for 4 seconds as you follow the green dot along the top of the box. <br> - Breathe out for 4 seconds as you follow the green dot down the right side of the box.<br> - Hold or pause for 4 seconds as you follow the green dot along the bottom of the box.<br> - Repeat 5 times. <br> <br> <b>Tips</b><br> - Breathe in and out through your nose.<br> - During the pause, you may wish to keep a slight lifting sensation at the back of the throat, rather than clamping down. <br> - Try not to clench the jaw or tense your body.<br> - If you feel light-headed or it doesn’t feel right, go back to the natural rhythm of your breath, or find a pace that feels comfortable for you.
AHS D-Stress Even Paced Breathing Video
About Us
Mental Health Promotion & Illness Prevention (MHPIP) works with AHS staff, community partners, and other stakeholders to develop tools and resources intended to promote mental health and help prevent mental illness across the lifespan. The goal of these resources are to:
- increase mental health literacy;
- improve and maintain positive mental health through healthy life-style practices;
- identify and reduce the risk factors associated with the development of poor mental health or a mental illness;
- reduce the stigma and discrimination associated with mental illness and poor mental health.
There are several theories and evidence that guide the work of MHPIP. Many health professionals use our resources in their practice to support their patients and clients. We have developed several resources that can be helpful for health professionals in the promotion of positive mental health.