What a tough couple of years. As the pandemic has raged through the community the toll on mental health has slowly burned through our community. As May approaches and the BMO Vancouver Marathon celebrates its 50th year we are thrilled to be part of the team pounding the pavement doing triple the good with RUN4HOPE.
As you hit the road supporting the Canadian Mental Health Association – Vancouver-Fraser, you are taking care of your own mental health, creating a more open community and raising much needed funds. Donations for your RUN4HOPE are a chance for friends, loved ones and colleagues to show their support for your hard work – and goodness knows we all love something to celebrate at the moment.
Whether on a treadmill or hitting the winter roads outside, running can be a great time to meditate and calm your mind or a chance to pound out frustrations and worries. Physical activity is an important part of mental wellness. Motivation is key too. Mental Wellness and running a marathon are about small improvements that lead to a big result.
Extra push
In training, likely early April, you might hit a bump – a malaise that has you questioning your success. Those negative thoughts can also hit on run day, perhaps just before the halfway point. We believe in the power of music to give a little extra push when we need a temporary mood booster. Get these tunes ready to help you power through that negative energy.
Harder, Better, faster, stronger – Daft Punk
Shut up and dance – Walk the moon
Can’t stop the feeling – Justin Timberlake
Girl in the fire – Pendulum
Don’t stop believing – Journey
Why support the CMHA-VF?
All funds raised by the RUN4HOPE support our youth programs. We believe everyone deserves to be mentally healthy and live in a healthy community. By offering community-based mental health education, services, and support for all ages, CMHA, Vancouver-Fraser contributes to the long-term health and wellbeing of our communities. We have three pillars of work:
- Wellness and Community Inclusion – We walk alongside people living with mental illness. We support them to reach their hopes and dreams and to live full and contributing lives in their communities.
- Prevention and Early Intervention – We increase young peoples’ mental health knowledge while developing their skills to maintain positive mental health and to ask for help when they need it.
- Mental Health Promotion – Mental health includes habits and behaviours that build positive mental health, social support networks we can count on and having a strong connection to our community. We help people with these aspects of living a mentally healthy life and reduce the stigma related to mental illness.
The organization is a holistic partner in the continuum of mental health and provides lower cost collaborative primary care directly to the consumer. Altogether, the organization has a strong focus on community integration, education, housing, peer support and navigation, employment, counseling, prevention and promotion, and social enterprise mandate focused on helping reduce stigma in the community.