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Red Deer high school student publishing a high-end magazine focussed on teen mental health advocacy

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From Red Deer Catholic Regional Schools

Red Deer Catholic Regional Schools, Smiles Thru Lindsey, and Central Alberta Child Advocacy Centre to help increase awareness of innovative new magazine

Red Deer Catholic Regional Schools (RDCRS) has collaborated with the Smiles Thru Lindsey Foundation and the Central Alberta Child Advocacy Centre to help increase awareness of mental health issues to teens through the innovative work of a local high school student.

Sophia Arnusch, a Grade 11 student from École Secondaire Notre Dame High School, has been making waves locally and internationally, through her self-published magazine, Sophia Lia, which centers around teen mental health.

Attracting attention from thousands of teenagers, community stakeholders, world-wide influencers, over 40,000 Instagram followers and celebrities such as Bethany Hamilton (who graced the cover of her first issue), Arnusch is striving to break the stigma around mental health and help normalize it. Driven by her own struggles with mental health, Arnusch hopes her magazine, which debuted in August, will provide a community where middle and high school students can go to get advice on all things mental health-related including self-care tips, healthy living practices, an email hotline called Sophia’s Hotline, just to name a few.

“Sophia has amazed us with the passion and professionalism she has put into creating such an engaging, informative and timely magazine. Promoting positive mental health is always at the forefront and is even more critical with what our youth are experiencing in today’s world,” said Principal, Rose McQuay at École Secondaire Notre Dame High School.

Rick and Cindy More, Founders of the Smiles Thru Lindsey Foundation, have experienced tragedy first-hand related to mental illness, when their daughter, Lindsey, took her own life. They hope to continue to help those suffering from depression and mental health issues by spreading awareness about it.

“We are inspired to say the least of the passion Sophia has for others and a work ethic that will change lives for the better. This project and its effectiveness is exactly what our Smiles Thru Lindsey Foundation is mandated for and what our amazing Lindsey sought before her death in 2015. Lindsey will be cheering Sophia on every step of the way,” said Founders, Rick and Cindy More, of the Smiles Thru Lindsey Foundation.

As a Division, we are committed to our mission of supporting inclusive communities that foster care and compassion of students, families and staff which is why making the magazine accessible to all students across the Division is instrumental.

“Our focus as a Division this year has been on mental wellness. Getting this magazine into the hands of our students is key to opening up the conversation around mental health, in hopes to bring positive change in our students’ understanding and attitudes surrounding it,” said Superintendent of Schools, Kathleen Finnigan at Red Deer Catholic Regional Schools.

As the editor-in-chief, Arnusch hopes to continue to produce new issues of the magazine and keep mental illness at the forefront of conversations amongst youth.

Mark Jones, CEO of the Central Alberta Child Advocacy Centre, understands the need to amplify advocacy efforts for mental health, and as a result, their organization generously donated 1,000 copies of the magazine to help make it easily accessible for middle and high school students.

With a forward-thinking mindset, Arnusch is quickly paving the foundation to help create positive change for people living with mental illness.

The second issue of the Sophia Lia magazine is due out later this month. To learn more, visit https://sophialiamag.com/magazine/.

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SPARC Red Deer – Caring Adult Nominations open now!

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Red Deer community let’s give a round of applause to the incredible adults shaping the future of our kids. Whether they’re a coach, neighbour, teacher, mentor, instructor, or someone special, we want to know about them!

Tell us the inspiring story of how your nominee is helping kids grow up great. We will honour the first 100 local nominees for their outstanding contributions to youth development. It’s time to highlight those who consistently go above and beyond!

To nominate, visit Events (sparcreddeer.ca)

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Addictions

‘Harm Reduction’ is killing B.C.’s addicts. There’s got to be a better way

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From the Frontier Centre for Public Policy

By Susan Martinuk 

B.C. recently decriminalized the possession of small amounts of illicit drugs. The resulting explosion of addicts using drugs in public spaces, including parks and playgrounds, recently led the province’s NDP government to attempt to backtrack on this policy

Since 2016, more than 40,000 Canadians have died from opioid drug overdoses — almost as many as died during the Second World War.
Governments, health care professionals and addiction experts all acknowledge that widespread use of opioids has created a public health crisis in Canada. Yet they agree on virtually nothing else about this crisis, including its causes, possible remedies and whether addicts should be regarded as passive victims or accountable moral agents.

Fuelled by the deadly manufactured opioid fentanyl, Canada’s national drug overdose rate stood at 19.3 people per 100,000 in 2022, a shockingly high number when compared to the European Union’s rate of just 1.8. But national statistics hide considerable geographic variation. British Columbia and Alberta together account for only a quarter of Canada’s population yet nearly half of all opioid deaths. B.C.’s 2022 death rate of 45.2/100,000 is more than double the national average, with Alberta close behind at 33.3/100,00.

In response to the drug crisis, Canada’s two western-most provinces have taken markedly divergent approaches, and in doing so have created a natural experiment with national implications.

B.C. has emphasized harm reduction, which seeks to eliminate the damaging effects of illicit drugs without actually removing them from the equation. The strategy focuses on creating access to clean drugs and includes such measures as “safe” injection sites, needle exchange programs, crack-pipe giveaways and even drug-dispensing vending machines. The approach goes so far as to distribute drugs like heroin and cocaine free of charge in the hope addicts will no longer be tempted by potentially tainted street drugs and may eventually seek help.

But safe-supply policies create many unexpected consequences. A National Post investigation found, for example, that government-supplied hydromorphone pills handed out to addicts in Vancouver are often re-sold on the street to other addicts. The sellers then use the money to purchase a street drug that provides a better high — namely, fentanyl.

Doubling down on safe supply, B.C. recently decriminalized the possession of small amounts of illicit drugs. The resulting explosion of addicts using drugs in public spaces, including parks and playgrounds, recently led the province’s NDP government to attempt to backtrack on this policy — though for now that effort has been stymied by the courts.

According to Vancouver city councillor Brian Montague, “The stats tell us that harm reduction isn’t working.” In an interview, he calls decriminalization “a disaster” and proposes a policy shift that recognizes the connection between mental illness and addiction. The province, he says, needs “massive numbers of beds in treatment facilities that deal with both addictions and long-term mental health problems (plus) access to free counselling and housing.”

In fact, Montague’s wish is coming true — one province east, in Alberta. Since the United Conservative Party was elected in 2019, Alberta has been transforming its drug addiction policy away from harm reduction and towards publicly-funded treatment and recovery efforts.

Instead of offering safe-injection sites and free drugs, Alberta is building a network of 10 therapeutic communities across the province where patients can stay for up to a year, receiving therapy and medical treatment and developing skills that will enable them to build a life outside the drug culture. All for free. The province’s first two new recovery centres opened last year in Lethbridge and Red Deer. There are currently over 29,000 addiction treatment spaces in the province.

This treatment-based strategy is in large part the work of Marshall Smith, current chief of staff to Alberta’s premier and a former addict himself, whose life story is a testament to the importance of treatment and recovery.

The sharply contrasting policies of B.C. and Alberta allow a comparison of what works and what doesn’t. A first, tentative report card on this natural experiment was produced last year in a study from Stanford University’s network on addiction policy (SNAP). Noting “a lack of policy innovation in B.C.,” where harm reduction has become the dominant policy approach, the report argues that in fact “Alberta is currently experiencing a reduction in key addiction-related harms.” But it concludes that “Canada overall, and B.C. in particular, is not yet showing the progress that the public and those impacted by drug addiction deserve.”

The report is admittedly an early analysis of these two contrasting approaches. Most of Alberta’s recovery homes are still under construction, and B.C.’s decriminalization policy is only a year old. And since the report was published, opioid death rates have inched higher in both provinces.

Still, the early returns do seem to favour Alberta’s approach. That should be regarded as good news. Society certainly has an obligation to try to help drug users. But that duty must involve more than offering addicts free drugs. Addicted people need treatment so they can kick their potentially deadly habit and go on to live healthy, meaningful lives. Dignity comes from a life of purpose and self-control, not a government-funded fix.

Susan Martinuk is a senior fellow at the Frontier Centre for Public Policy and author of the 2021 book Patients at Risk: Exposing Canada’s Health Care Crisis. A longer version of this article recently appeared at C2CJournal.ca.

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