Mental Health Week 2022: Empathy Series

From Monday, May 2nd, 2022 to Friday, May 6th, WRSPC will be joining the Canadian Mental Health Association (CMHA) and other organizations across Canada in acknowledging and celebrating #MentalHealthWeek.

This year the theme is empathy, and getting real about how to get help. Throughout the week, our focus will be on empathy and suicide prevention, as well as how empathy can help to reduce the impact of suicide in our community.

Key Messages

• Empathy is the ability to recognize, understand, and share the feelings of another. It involves experiencing another person’s point of view, rather than just our own.
• Empathy may help to prevent suicide by allowing us to connect to the specific feelings, experiences, and perspectives of someone who is struggling with thoughts of suicide.
• Empathy can be developed and practiced through a variety of ways, including trying new experiences or reading fiction.
• To prevent empathy fatigue or burnout, we need to make sure that we are taking care of ourselves as well as implementing and enforcing boundaries when we need to.

Empathy Blog Series 

All of the key messages above are expanded upon in our Empathy blog series. Check out the series below:

• What is Empathy?
• Empathy and Suicide Prevention
• Using Empathy in Conversations
• Developing Empathy
• Empathy and Boundaries