Community organizations launch 'recovery college' for Northwestern Ontario

A new initiative in northwestern Ontario will offer workshops and peer support to people who are in recovery or who have mental health challenges. The Thunder Bay and Fort Frances branches of the Canadian Mental Health Association (CMHA) are partnering with the non-profit social service organization Alpha Court in Thunder Bay. 

It will be called the Northwest Recovery College, and the details were announced at a media conference on Wednesday.

"I think it's a definite need for our community," said Brant Warwick of the CMHA. "I think we have new struggles that we didn't have maybe 10-15 years ago, and we think this recovery college is really going to bridge the gap between three different, but prominent, organizations in our community and offer supports to people that we haven't had yet in our community."

Warwick said the college has already launched. "We're starting off nice and slow of course, the summer months can be a little bit hectic with people coming and going and vacations and whatnot," he said.  

Participants must attend all sessions of a course to graduate. The courses will cover a range of topics, such as cooking a turkey dinner, trauma-informed care, anxiety, depression, and hoarding. They'll be offered in-person and virtually.

The first course begins in mid-May and will focus on anxiety.

While the recovery college model began in the UK, the CMHA has opened more than a dozen such colleges in Canada.

"If you look at the recovery colleges throughout the province, there are some organizations, CMHA organizations that have 20-30 different courses running at any given time," Warwick said. In September they will review what went well over the summer and send out surveys to evaluate the needs of participants.  

"The long term goal is to have it open to members of our community as well," he said. "But we don't want to overblow it either. We want to take our time with things, get it right."

Susan McGregor is a member of the New Foundations program at the CMHA, and will be providing peer support to participants.

"I'm looking forward to it. I believe it would help a lot of a lot of people around here," she said. "I think the education is a big benefit to people that are suffering with anxiety and depression."

Nicole Latour, executive director of Alpha Court, said the partnership will allow the organizations to share resources to provide better courses and services through the Northwest Recovery College.

"It's been proven to be very effective nationally and internationally," she said. "It provides actual courses for individuals that are struggling with mental health challenges to take."

"It's peer-led, and peers are involved in all aspects of the recovery college, from governance to course facilitation," she said. "We have a lot of untapped potential in the people we serve, so it really will heighten their sense of self, their confidence, and also reduce stigma that we see that still exists around mental health challenges."