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Sheryl Smith Augustine - Nat'l Certified Counsellor/ Master Trainer
"We are doing a 2 day workshop, a mental health facilitation. The workshop is geared towards helping individuals identify mental health problems also to be able to do some initial assessment and to be able to link persons who need mental health services with the services that are currently in existence. So it is not a design to usurp anything that exists, but to compliment what is there. It is the design specifically for community persons so that people at the community level will have a better understanding of mental health, of mental health problems, how to identify when they may be going through something that requires some additional assistance and then they will be able to have some idea of some of the resources that currently exist and how to access those services."

"It is an attempt to increase the public's awareness about the importance of mental health, to bring the discussion about mental health back to the table and keep it on the table, because often times when we look at medical issue we tend to want to look only at physical health and physical health does not exist outside of mental health. We know that if you have a medical condition and if you are not mentally well, that condition can deteriorate much further. So we want to be able to have in the same conversation when we talk about physical health that we also talk about mental health."

Sandra Mariano - Mental Health Association Representative
"It's extremely important, we sometimes tend to think there are not people out there that we can go to when we have a problem and so trainings like this help others to become better skilled in helping people to at least if they can't solve their problem at least refer them to the proper individuals that can help. We are learning to be mental health facilitators who are not counsellors but persons that are able to identify when someone is in a problem or a crisis situation try to help them to get the necessary help that they need to deal with the situation that they are in."

Errol Longsworth - Nat'l Drug Abuse Control Council
"When it comes to substance abuse this is only a portion of the whole broader picture of mental health and so this training will give us more skills with how to identify, how to help people who have other mental issues that they are going through along with substance abuse. I am taking whatever I've learned here and taking it back to my office and helping my co-workers more with what I've learnt within these 2 past days."

"It's more about helping people to identify that they have a problem because if you ask people how they are feeling, I will say I'm okay but is behind that okay? How is there day going? What is affecting them? This is affecting people within and it affects the economy, it affects the productivity of our country and everything because people are going through a lot. There's a lot of crisis, there's a lot of trauma in everyday life, on social media, in anything that we engage in it affects us some type of way. As a mental health facilitator it gives us the front line workers to help these people identify that I'm going through a rough time right now."

Schools and big businesses are some of the important locations that stakeholders are hoping having a Mental Health Facilitator will make a key difference.