20% of Canadians will struggle with a mental health issue at some point in their lives but only 7% of medical funding goes to mental health services – mental health IS health! Peer Support is an excellent holistic care option adjunct to your current team and regime – a Peer Support Specialist is much like a Recovery Coach – they have lived/living experience of mental illness and mental health recovery and are able to guide you through your recovery in a co-creation, Therapeutic Alliance model where power sharing and inclusion are integral to the relationship – the peers (YOU) lead, Eleanor facilitates!

Mood Mend is a confidential and non-judgmental peer support service offered by a team of certified, experienced, and empathetic Peer Support Specialists.

Mood Mend specializes in mood disorders and anxiety but we also work with clients with all manner of SPMI (severe and persistent mental illness) and personality disorders. Mood Mend’s facilitators, Peer Support Specialists, and Recovery Coaches are experienced in compounding issues and complex care needs and intersectionalities in addition to SPMI – like substance use, disordered eating/eating disorders, dual diagnosis (with workers who specialize in ADHD when presenting with Bipolar Disorder, specifically), chronic illness and chronic pain, physical disabilities, IPV (intimate partner violence)/DV (domestic violence), and trauma (particularly childhood trauma, abuse, and neglect; C-PTSD and PTSD), and sexual trauma and/or incest survivorship specifically + vicarious and intergenerational trauma, as well as gendered issues, queer issues, BIPOC mental health and racial Othering.

OFFERINGS:

1)Direct Service:

• one-on-one peer support and mood disorders recovery coaching
• support group facilitation for mental health agencies, long-term care facilities, and other like organizations and businesses

2)Psychoeducation:

• Lunch & Learn series for your workplace, educational institution, government or non-profit agency, or the like on a topic of your choosing or that is relevant to the people at your organization e.g. burnout, stress, basic psychoeducation and de-stigmatization
• One-off motivational or testimonial speaking engagements or tours
• Advocacy & Community Organizing

3)Consultation

For more see: The Process; Rates & Services; and Confidentiality & Comfort Agreements

Meet Eleanor, the founder of and lead Peer Support Specialist at Mood Mend.

Eleanor is a certified Peer Support Specialist through Robyn Priest: Live Your Truth and has worked as a Peer Support Specialist for over ten years for such high profile organizations as Hope’s Garden Eating Disorders Resource Centre (London, ON, Canada); Sheena’s Place Eating Disorders Recovery Centre, Mood Disorders Association of Ontario (now Hope + Me), The Mental Health Support Network at St. Joseph’s Hospital, Cota Health, the YWCA, Unity Health – St. Michael’s Hospital Mental Health and Addictions Service, and CAMH (all in Toronto, ON, Canada); and, she volunteers for the Harm Reduction Happy Hour here in Toronto and CAPUD (the Canadian Association for People Who Use Drugs) and CDPC (the Canadian Drug Policy Coalition) nationally at the federal drug policy and law level as a lobbyist, advocate, activist, and peer.

She has lived experience of severe and persistent “mental illness” and has been in symptom-free functional recovery since 2011. Eleanor has a lifetime of experience in the arts, particularly the narrative arts (writing, storytelling) and visual art (black and white acrylic photorealistic portraiture), with a previous career in Publishing as an Editor, alongside over 15 years of volunteering and working in the non-profit sector all tolled.

She is currently a Peer Program Engagement Co-Facilitator for CAMH’s Research & Education Department in their Collaborative Learning College – McCain Complex Care and Recovery at their Queen Street campus in downtown Toronto, designing, developing, and facilitating a low-barrier, strengths-based, recovery-resiliency-oriented psychoeducation and skills-focused education program as a BIPOC for BIPOC individuals/CAMH peers/clients/”patients”/ex-patients/psychiatric consumers/survivors from a place of lived/living experience of mental illness and mental health and substance use recovery and Harm Reduction, and personal experience as a racialized person having experienced racism and racial inequities in mental health care and substance use disorders treatment and systems navigation, and social disadvantage more broadly. These psychoeducation and skills based peer groups are offered both online, with a provincial catchment (but really national and international -if you can get the link, you can follow from wherever you are!), and in-person, locally in the GTA.

• Peer Support Drop-In Group
• Writing Drop-In Group
• Exploring Mental Health and Grief Through Writing
• The Art of Letter Writing
• Mindfulness Through Photography
• BIWOC Hibiscus Healing Circle

GROUPS ELEANOR HAS IN DEVELOPMENT AT THE RECOVERY COLLEGE:

• Eating Disorders/Disordered Eating Support Group
• B{L}ACC – Black, Afro, Caribbean, Canadian Critical Conversation Group on Mental Health and Substance Use
• Harm Reduction 101 co-facilitated with with Matt Johnson (foundet of Moss Park SIS when it was still a peer-run tent in the park!)
• Mental Illness and Addiction: Stigma on the Silver Screen – A Movie Group

As alluded to above, she has worked as an outreach Mental Health Peer Support Specialist on a FACT Team (a flexible assertive community treatment team, the highest level of community mental health support aside from hospitalization/institutionalization) called FOCUS for Cota in partnership with St. Michael’s Hospital Mental Health and Addictions Service and as an Overdose Prevention and Support Worker for Parkdale Queen West Community Health Centre’s Supervised Consumption Service, with a background in Harm Reduction Case Management in supportive housing for the YWCA, Fundraising and Development for Dignitas International, and Non-Profit Administration and Volunteer Coordination for Gilda’s Club Greater Toronto.

Mental Health and Addiction/Social Work is a second career for Eleanor. She has a BA in English Language & Literature with a minor in Visual Arts History & Criticism and a postgraduate degree in Publishing and has worked in both trade (fiction) and educational (K-12, college and university) Publishing as an Editor for Dundurn Press, Second Story Press, Oxford University Press, and Nelson Education, and in Library and Information Science/Archival for the University of Western Ontario and for the Municipality of Chatham-Kent, ON.

She has been published in journals and zines for her short stories and poetry from elementary school onward, including being selected to attend the Young Authors Conference, where she attended a writing workshop led by Robert Munsch at St. Clair College in second grade; on the arts hub London Fuse as a film reviewer as an undergraduate; and, more recently, as a mental health professional – essays on the philosophy of consciousness – for The Mindful Word here in Toronto and Philosophy Now Magazine based out of the UK.

As a cis queer woman of colour (biracial – Black and White) with lived/living experience of SPMI, C-PTSD, PSUD, ADHD, ASD, a physical disability, and social disadvantage more broadly, Eleanor comes from a client-centered, strengths-based, trauma-informed, anti-racist, anti-sexist, anti-ableist, anti-oppressive, sex positive, drug positive Harm Reduction lens, with a focus on the Blackfoot Siksika Nation Teepee/Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs/the Social Determinants of Health/Rat Park and comes from a place of hope for all her clients’ psychosocial rehabilitation and recovery; her personal experience is the linchpin of her work and informs her professional practice with peers/clients/”patients”/ex-patients/psychiatric consumers/survivors and community stakeholders interested in mental health and mental wellness.

Eleanor has over 20,000 hours of Peer Support experience and has worked with clients with all forms of mental health and substance use challenges, histories of trauma, justice involvement, and homelessness, Acquired Brain Injury (ABI)/Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI), Concurrent Disorders, Dual Diagnoses (DD), Youth and Young Adult, Adult, and Geriatric Mental Health (GMH), one-on-one in their homes, in hospital, in the community (coffee shops, art galleries, walk and talk by the lake, Jays games, etc.), and in other institutional settings and non-profit organizations, and has designed, developed, facilitated, and evaluated over 20 Peer Support groups:

If you are a budding Peer, we accept junior volunteer Peer Support Specialists on our team here at Mood Mend, so please reach out if interested in gaining experience.

The approach:

While incorporating tools and techniques from CBT (Cognitive Behavioural Therapy), DBT (Dialectical Behavioural Therapy), and ACT (Acceptance and Commitment Therapy), Eleanor predominately comes from the Narrative Therapy approach.

Narrative Therapy is like Art Therapy but with words! The focus of the approach is on the manner in which individuals construct meaning rather than on the way they behave. In philosophy and in neuroscience, the “I”/the third eye or the mind is what they call “the narrative centre of self.” Your mind is constantly generating the story of who you are to yourself and you, in turn, relay it to others. Narrative Therapy seeks to address minds that may be telling themselves problem-saturated narratives e.g. The Trauma Narrative — “I experienced trauma; therefore, I am damaged goods.”

It is a postmodern, talk therapy model (typically done one-on-one rather than in groups), developed by social workers Michael White and David Epston in the 70s and 80s, that focuses on social construction (concept: language doesn’t describe reality, it defines it), meaning-making through language and relationships, and broader social and political discourses, all whilst considering multiple vantage points and Sparkling Moments or Unique Outcomes e.g. The Survive to Thrive Narrative — “I experienced trauma, I survived, and I aim to thrive!”

“I am not what happened to me, I am what I choose to become.” ~ Carl Jung

To put this modality to work in a group context, Eleanor has developed a meta-narrative technique – a writing course, Writing for Wellness™, and an art therapy-based course, Conscious Creativity™, meant to address the 5 main principles:

• shared and transformative experience

• naming and unpacking (assessment and intervention)

• meaning-making

• listening and experience gathering

• reflection

and 5 intended outcomes;

• increased self-awareness (you are the expert in your own story)

• increased self-compassion

• externalizing problems

• constructing preferred identities

• developing courses of action

of Narrative Therapy.

The goal is to deconstruct, rewrite (co-author) or re-imagine and reconstruct the narratives we tell ourselves and others about ourselves in a way that helps us actualize positive change.

For more: My Story; Mission, Vision & Values; Peer Support Mentoring vs. Psychotherapy; the Mechanics of the Process/How it Works; Mood Disorders; Recovery

GET HELP HERE!

Mood Mend is based in Toronto, ON, Canada but welcomes clients from beyond the GTA (virtual and socially distanced support is available).

For more information on Mood Mend’s services, to book a FREE 30-minute consultation for one-on-one peer support and mood disorders peer mentoring and recovery coaching, or to give feedback, please use the form below: