TAYLOR TACKLES TROUBLES
Social worker helps people better deal with mental health
Cara Taylor wants people to be curious about mental health.
As a registered social worker and the owner of Cara Taylor Mental Health Education, Taylor works to educate and equip people with practical strategies for navigating mental health.
“I often say to be curious. If we have a genuine curiosity that’s unassuming, we can learn so much about mental health, be it our own or someone else’s,” she said. “If someone says they have depression, you don’t necessarily know what that means. It can be so different from one person to the next. Getting curious means setting down your assumptions and genuinely asking someone what their experience is like.”
Originally from Saskatoon, Taylor
has a passion for social justice and studied social work through the University of Regina. While she was in school, she suffered a major depressive episode and experienced delusions and suicidal thoughts.
“I spent hours crying every day, had multiple panic attacks, and I had to stop volunteering, working and going to school,” Taylor said. “It wasn’t until I experienced my own episode of mental illness that I realized I wanted to help reduce stigma, because I didn’t even realize what mental illness was until it happened to me.”
After this experience Taylor was inspired to raise awareness, and created a non-profit called Project Oaks, an online platform for sharing stories about mental health in the prairie provinces.
“Through Project Oaks I told personal stories of mental illness with the goal of reducing stigma. When you humanize people who live with mental health issues, you reduce negative misconceptions. Stigma comes from assumptions we make about people based on our preconceived ideas of mental health conditions, for example, thinking someone is overdramatic, lazy, too sensitive. When you actually hear someone’s story, though, it’s hard to continue those narratives.”
Taylor continued with Project Oaks until 2016. That year, her mom died by suicide and she dissolved the platform in order to take time to deal with her grief.
After living and working in Alberta for a few years, Taylor moved back to Saskatoon to start a master’s degree in social work. At the same time, she started Cara Taylor Mental Health Education in May 2018, which is lovingly dedicated to her mom.
Through Mental Health Education she offers a series of pre-set and customizable courses across the prairie provinces for organizations, businesses, non-profits and other groups. Some of the courses are standardized, like Mental Health First Aid through the Mental Health Commission of Canada, while others she researched and developed herself. Topics include suicide intervention, body image, and a course for helping professionals that addresses compassion fatigue, trauma and burnout.
Having taught more than 500 people in the province already, Taylor says her overall goal is to make practical knowledge more accessible to everyone.
“The health-care system is very overburdened, especially mental health services. But there are everyday people who want to help others with mental health conditions. It doesn’t mean don’t go to professionals, but it’s about having knowledge accessible for what to do in the meantime if you need to wait 12 months to see a psychiatrist. When you look online for how to help someone, many websites say, ‘Buy them a candle; send them to a counsellor.’ It’s not really specific or practical, so this is about building capacity in the community.”
A key piece woven into everything is her personal story, which Taylor says is invaluable for connecting with others.
“In social work we’re often taught that people who have lived experience are experts on the topic, more so than just learning something from a book. There’s something to be said for the value of lived experience because it means I can see things through a different perspective, and I can be more sensitive and aware of other people’s experiences.”
Liam Mooney, a vice-president at Cameco Corporation, has brought Taylor in for Mental Health First Aid training with his team. He says Taylor’s personal story is what makes her relatable.
“Cara is very knowledgeable and she shares a lot of first-hand experience,” Mooney said. “The training is deeply impactful because she makes it very personal for people who take it.”
Mooney says his team is stronger due to the sharing that took place while learning about mental health.
“I think that sort of training creates deeper empathy for the people who take it together, and they see each other in more vulnerable ways,” he said.
“I think that teams perform better when there’s a deeper understanding of what motivates and affects people. It’s that classic axiom of walking a mile in someone else’s shoes. There are times where people will be stronger and there’s times where they might not be, and there needs to be understanding that the reason for that might not always be visible.”
Mental health training in the workplace is becoming more widespread as awareness increases. Subsequently, Taylor has focused her master’s research on psychological health and safety in the workplace, specifically with Saskatoon’s Brief and Social Detox unit, where people can go to have a medically supervised substance detox. Taylor is researching how the work itself affects the mental health of the unit’s employees.
“Psychological health and safety is really about looking at workplace conditions and workplace factors known to influence employee mental health, and then strengthening those things,” she said. “In every organization, there’s always mental health to consider, be it for the employees or the clients that you’re serving.”
Cara is very knowledgeable and she shares a lot of first-hand experience. The training is deeply impactful because she makes it very personal for people who take it.”
Taylor has also been working with the Saskatoon Food Bank and Learning Centre on improving the psychological health and safety of its workplace. Deborah Hamp, director of operations and engagement, says the experience has led to deeper reflection.
“It’s been beneficial in the sense that we can all do some reflection on the type of workplace that we want to build, by creating transparency and normalizing mental health as an issue that’s just as important as physical health,” Hamp said.
Normalizing discussions on mental health is key to a thriving workplace, Hamp says.
“When people feel supported and when we remove the stigma of mental health, we can bring some of those issues to light and create healthier, happier and stronger workplaces. It’s important to think deeply about how employers can have a really positive impact on the lives of our employees,” she said, adding that Taylor is “not afraid to tackle the tough stuff.”
Taylor says she welcomes this type of discussion as an opportunity to educate.
“I really believe in the power of education and especially of education that we seek out ourselves. We need meaningful, innovative and engaging education. I always say, ‘Ask me hard questions.’ Not that I’ll always have the answer, but it means we’re actually engaging with the material. I appreciate when people are honest and ask me questions like ‘What if someone feels like a burden?’ or ‘Is this person just seeking attention?’ Ask me that! We need to talk about that because where else do we get to ask meaningful, livedthrough questions about what it’s like to help someone with a mental health issue or what it means to live with one?”
Taylor says that one of the most important aspects of dealing with mental health is listening and believing someone’s experience.
“If the only thing you can do is validate another person’s experience and believe them, that’s actually huge. So many people struggle with a sense of being invalidated, whether it’s by a medical professional, a family member, a counsellor. I experienced all of the above when I was sick and it just distresses you even more when you feel a burden of disbelief from other people.”
Taylor says it’s the affirmative feedback she gets that drives her to continue.
“I love when people tell me that it’s really helped them — it’s why I do what I do. When someone tells me they feel better equipped to deal with mental health or they don’t feel lonely anymore, I know it’s having an impact and I simply can’t imagine not doing this work.”
She wants people to have a solid base of practical, usable knowledge on mental health, she says.
“I’m really humbled that people are willing to step into this stuff with me and actually ask hard questions. I appreciate the vulnerability that I receive on that end as well. You can’t give a formula for any of these things, but you can give a framework. That framework can help us walk through a situation with a lot more confidence, sensitivity, compassion and effectiveness in what we’re doing.”