People First Radio

Abe Oudshoorn recently argued that success, rather than issues like addiction or mental illness, is driving visible homelessness across many Canadian cities. “When we look at the data, you get some really strange phenomena where perhaps more poor cities, cities with a lower income across the board, may have less homelessness than rich cities like […]

Philadelphia based social worker and doctoral student Olúṣèyí Ṣẹ́gun shared a message from two very different experiences of grad school at the master’s level. “Just because one environment might not seem hospitable, that doesn’t mean that there isn’t a space for you in the grander scheme of academics,” she said. Ṣẹ́gun wrote a first person […]

Isaiah Neil joined People First Radio to speak about his experiences as a suicide attempt survivor and journey to becoming an advocate for youth mental health. The Edmonton resident recently shared some of his experiences as part of a panel on youth mental health, to mark the launch of a report into the subject from […]

Denise McArthur has been involved with Restorative Justice Cowichan for the last 8 years, where’s she’s currently the restorative justice coordinator. She says over the years her group has discovered that if you can help someone take responsibility for their actions in a way that doesn’t end up being a huge crisis in their life, […]

Nancy and Susan Grundy are the subjects of Mad Sisters, a memoir written by Susan, which chronicles the siblings’ relationship from the 1960s through to the COVID-19 pandemic. When Nancy was 13, she was diagnosed with schizophrenia. A diagnosis that has since been updated to schizoaffective bipolar disorder. Susan says the relationship has changed dramatically […]

Dr. Paula Cook and Dr. Darlene Petersen specialize in addiction medicine, and practice in different parts of Utah. They joined People First Radio and shared a number of topics, including systemic barriers to accessing treatment in the U.S., intersections between addiction and other determinants of health, and the role of trauma in substance use. Petersen […]

Culture journalist Mihika Agarwal shares insights from her recent reporting in The Walrus on AI companion bots, which mimic the experience of a close, sometimes even intimate relationship. “Think chat GPT, but it will pretend like it’s your lover or partner,” she said. Agarwal compares the situation to the 2013 film Her, in which a […]

Christine Korol, a Vancouver based psychologist, says it’s not uncommon for people to diagnose themselves with a mental health condition based on information they’ve seen online or on a social media platform. “It comes in waves,” she said. “A few years ago, Tourette’s seemed to be all the rage.” Korol says a few years ago, […]

Patricia, Beatriz, and Constanza Morén are three sisters living in Spain. They joined People First Radio to share memories of their father, who died last year. “He was the best father a daughter could have,” Constanza said. “My father worked as an industrial engineer in the civil service in Spain and made a very good […]

For the last five years, Calgary based clinical psychologist Jonathon Stea has been posting online to try and confront misinformation related to mental health. “I really started out on social media and just in more popular media, trying to debunk myths related to the nature of cannabis addiction,” he said. “Once I got to social […]

From getting help for his own mental health, to working to change the culture around mental health at his fraternity at UBC, to insights from his role as a community mental health worker supporting people with diagnoses like schizophrenia, Noah Battista shares his journey to becoming an advocate for mental health. Battista says he was […]

Heather McDonald and Shane Steinhauer were in attendance at Nanaimo’s event marking International Overdose Awareness Day on August 31, 2024. The Monday following the event, they spoke with People First Radio. The pair have worked together on a grass roots peer outreach initiative called Nightkeepers. McDonald said that in the week leading up to and […]

Speeches and stories from events held to mark International Overdose Awareness Day, August 31, 2024, in Nanaimo and Victoria. Amber McGrath urged people to lift others up and take action. “I know there’s been many times that I’ve sat on a sidewalk and cried for an hour and not one person said, ‘are you okay?'” […]

Author Bryce Andrews rowed his way up the Salish Sea from Seattle as he got to work on a future book exploring the area’s ecosystem. Along the way, he’s also encountered plenty of other folks on the water, and Andrews says he’s been struck by their kindness and manifest decency. “People are often just so […]

Mark DeVries of Parksville had spent decades visiting doctors and specialists for a variety of symptoms, including joint pains and daily headaches, which he says he was always told were normal. It was only recently that DeVreis, 57, received a diagnosis of Ehlers-Danlos syndrome (EDS), a condition that affects connective tissue. “It was my nurse […]

In September, people will start moving into 23 units of housing at 420 Albert street in Nanaimo, which had spent decades as an office building. Two of the developers behind the project, Adrian Vlasic and Fillah Karim, both in their twenties, spoke with People First Radio. Recorded August 21, 2024.

Charlotte Waddell, Director of the Children’s Health Policy Center at Simon Fraser University, says people of a certain generation will have experienced drug use prevention programs like “Just Say No” and D.A.R.E. when they were in school. But Waddell says the efficacy of those programs wasn’t thoroughly studied before they were widely rolled out. “Nobody […]

Brandon Kirk is sharing his story of life after addiction, and creating a space for others to do the same. The Cowichan Valley resident is working on a new video podcast series, Beyond Your Wildest Imagination. “it’s a podcast about life beyond addiction,” Kirk said. “It’s about Cowichan Valley people telling their powerful stories about […]

Back in 2009 Craig Ellerman was staying at the downtown Victoria Salvation Army Men’s Shelter. “I wasn’t in too good a state of mind, and I saw a poster up on the bulletin board advertising information sessions for the Uni 101 program,” he said. “I looked at it, and at first I thought maybe this […]

Carissa Halton remembered her own graduation, so she didn’t expect her daughter’s to hit quite so hard. “I’m sitting there in the graduation, the principal is starting to talk,” she said. “She just said, I see you guys out there and  this is something that your kids are doing because you sat and read with […]

Recent research suggests people want to get back in touch with old friends, but are worried about being a bother. “Although people seem to be generally interested in the idea of reconnecting, they don’t want to be the one to do it,” said Lara Aknin, Director of the Helping and Happiness Lab at Simon Fraser […]

Georgina Franki and Dingeman van Bochove speak about homelessness in Yellowknife and actions they’ve been taking to address the situation. First broadcast July 25, 2024.

The documentary escape game She Could Fly aims to educate around obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD). Sara Kenney and Mairéad Ruane from the game’s creative team spoke with People First Radio. “It was such a cool experience like to see how creatively such difficult experiences could be shown and conveyed to people without the experience [of […]

Ruhr University Bochum PhD student Laurin Plank has been exploring the idea of using social media posts as a diagnostic aid for mental health conditions. He says people could benefit from early detection. “If people only ever get help once they’ve developed the disorder, then a lot of damage has already been done,” he said. […]

Researcher Kora DeBeck is calling for regulation as a response to the toxic drug crisis. “The high level, main problem I see right now is the catastrophic number of overdose deaths that we’re experiencing,” she said. “The numbers are really holding steady years and years later, and what we know from coroner’s data, from a […]