CAMIMH was established in 1998 and serves as the only national coalition representing the mental health sector across the continuum of non-governmental stakeholders. The core purpose of CAMIMH is to put mental illness and mental health on the national health and social policy agendas. CAMIMH has been highly effective in forging collaborative national leadership on mental illness and mental health policy through four pillars of public education, research, data collection and reporting, and policy frameworks.
Mental health literacy has been defined as the knowledge, beliefs and abilities that enable the recognition, management or prevention of mental health problems. Enhanced mental health literacy appears to confer a range of benefits: prevention, early recognition and intervention, and reduction of stigma associated with mental illness. The Mental Health Literacy (MHL) project is the first of its kind in Canada, funded by Health Canada under the Population Health Fund (PHFN) as a response to the Chronic Disease - Integrated Approaches to Chronic Disease funding priority. It is a three-year project, which commenced in the fall of 2005. The report represents the conclusion of the first phase of the MHL project, which included a review of existing data, a national survey on MHL and follow-up focus group discussions. The next steps in the project involve sharing project findings and engaging with prospective partners across sectors and developing an Integrated National Strategy for Canada on Mental Health Literacy.
Data sources for the MHL project included an extensive review of the research literature pertaining to mental health literacy, preliminary focus group discussions with Canadian seniors and youth, a national survey of Canadians and an Aboriginal survey, and follow-up focus group discussions across Canada. The sample sizes were not large and the focus groups may not have been representative of all Canadians however, in the opinion of the authors, triangulation of results lends credibility to the project findings. For the most part, the results from the surveys and focus groups are mutually confirming and consistent with research findings from the literature review.
Section two of the report includes summaries of the results of each of these investigations and implications for enhancing mental health literacy. The knowledge domains reviewed include prevalence, recognition, perceived causes, attitudes about interventions and recovery, conceptions of mental illness, stigmatizing attitudes and perceptions of dangerousness, beliefs about protecting and promoting mental health, and perceived linkages between mental and physical health.
Section three of the report provides an overview of an integrated model for enhancing mental health literacy, possible strategies and next steps.