#rebeccafortin

[dlsphjournalism]

The Agenda with Steve Paikin -  Therapy Gets off the Couch

Interview with Rebecca Fortin (FGJ ‘17) -  As anyone who has sought help for mental illness knows, it can take a long time to see a psychiatrist in Ontario. Since necessity is the mother of invention, numerous innovations are emerging to help patients connect with therapists, mental-health coaches, and other clinicians. The Agenda discusses whether access to alternative health professionals and the increasing use of teletherapy is the answer? Are patients still getting good care if they aren't able to have a therapeutic face-to-face relationship with a psychiatrist? WATCH HERE

[dlsphjournalism]

TVO - Better mental health care may be as simple as an easier referral process

BY REBBECA FORTIN (FGJ ‘17) - At 17, Brianne Moore found herself sitting alone in hospital, in a psychiatrist’s office. “The room wasn’t very well lit,” she recalls. “It was dark and fit the tone. I remember shaking a lot. I remember sitting up tall waiting for what the doctor would say. It was scary.” Moore, now 19, started showing signs of anxiety when she was just 3 years old. Nothing was done; the hope was that she could grow out of it. But by age 13, she was feeling depressed, and by 16, she began to see a counsellor. Moore continued to struggle until a suicide attempt drove her to reach out for more intensive help at the Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario, in Ottawa. READ MORE

[dlsphjournalism]

QUARTZ - Canada is betting on a universal basic income to help cities gutted by manufacturing job loss

BY REBECCA FORTIN (FGJ ‘17) - Of all the ideas to pull people out of poverty, one of the more contentious is also the simplest: governments should just hand out monthly checks to the poor, no strings attached. That’s exactly what the Canadian province of Ontario plans to do, and it’s already causing a ruckus. The Liberal Party currently in control of the provincial government aims to roll out a pilot for a “universal basic income” program in what could be three cities in the spring of 2017. While it has yet to identify the guinea pigs, hints of what the system will look like can be found in a discussion paper authored last August by Hugh Segal, a former member of the Canadian Senate and now head of the University of Toronto’s Massey College. READ MORE

[dlsphjournalism]

NATIONAL POST - The upside of the Fort McMurray wildfire: The city finally has enough housing

BY REBECCA FORTIN (FGJ ‘17) - “I was about five months pregnant when the fires happened,” says Christina Mackay. Now a mother of three, she and her firefighter husband lost their home and everything in it when wildfire ripped through Fort McMurray in May. “We had the most beautiful neighbourhood. We loved our life there.” READ MORE