The Covid Catalyst Study is a global health policy research project to improve women’s health despite the setbacks of the pandemic. One of the findings was the importance of open dialogue related to mental health.
And Still She Rises: Policies for Improving Women’s Health for a More Equitable Post-Pandemic World
Shroff, F. M., Tsang, R., Schwartz, N., Alkhadragy, R., & Vora, K. (2022). And Still She Rises: Policies for Improving Women’s Health for a More Equitable Post-Pandemic World. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 19(16), 10104. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph191610104
Main Findings
Our main project resulting from this study is our ‘Break the Stigma‘ campaign, which was focused on collecting a cultural mosaic of perspectives from professionals, academics and people with lived experience to create healing resources and collective wisdom.
Break The Stigma Campaign
Break The Stigma is a project that is dedicated to reducing the stigma surrounding mental health. We are collecting a cultural mosaic of perspectives from professionals, academics and people with lived experience to share traditional knowledge, techniques and personal stories on mental health, illness and imbalances to create healing resources. We hope you will find answers that work for you and find a safe space to share experiences and create collective wisdom.
If you wish to have a voice, paving a path to a world with more compassion, empathy and open dialogue, please share your story! You can reach out to madeson@student.ubc.ca.
Audio
Check out our podcast on https://open.spotify.com/show/4gEPODdOzqtmEpyLyrzruv.
Video Interviews
Livia Peterson
A Milwaukee writer and mental health advocate living with anxiety, OCD, and unspecified psychosis, Livia has spent over five years sharing her story so others don’t feel alone. She sits down to share what diagnosis really looks like, how self-stigma almost silenced her, and why she kept speaking anyway. If you’ve ever felt alone in your mental health journey, this one’s for you.
Dr. Omnia Ahmed
A psychiatrist and clinical psychologist trained in CBT, psychodynamic therapy, and ACT, Dr. Omnia Ahmed has practiced across inpatient, outpatient, and forensic settings in England since 2018. Growing up in Egypt and building her career in the UK gives her a perspective you rarely see: how stigma, family shame, and cultural beliefs quietly decide whether someone seeks help or suffers in silence. Watch her unpack all of that and more in this episode.
Tracy Liao
Tracy has navigated childhood depression, postpartum anxiety, and a COVID experience so severe she thought she might die, and came out the other side with a philosophy that will genuinely shift the way you see yourself. A mom, Chinese medicine practitioner, and lifelong student of yoga and Buddhist meditation, she brings a perspective you won’t hear anywhere else: that suffering isn’t something to escape, it’s something to learn from. This one is hard to watch without feeling a little more hopeful.
Shaun Lund
Shaun isn’t a therapist or a researcher, he’s someone who actually lived it. From childhood panic attacks and imposter syndrome to a bipolar 2 diagnosis, years of medication trials, and a breaking point alone in a Calgary apartment, Shaun has navigated one of the most complex and winding mental health journeys you’ll hear told with this level of raw honesty. Now a mental health advocate, he shares what no clinical study can: what it actually feels like from the inside and how he found his way through.
Krista Samimi
Krista Samimi spent nearly a decade in pharmaceutical sales before a bipolar 1 diagnosis, three hospitalizations, and 72 days in a locked psychiatric facility completely dismantled the life she had built. Now a mental health advocate and wellness partner specializing in the gut brain axis, a cutting edge field of science reshaping how we understand mental health at its root, she brings something no researcher in a lab can: she has lived on both sides of the system. If you have ever felt like medication alone just was not enough, this episode will open your eyes to what else is possible.
Shirley Ross
Shirley Ross is a registered nurse, decades-long healthcare advocate, and current public board member overseeing the College of Physicians and Surgeons of British Columbia, so when she talks about gaps in the mental health system, she is speaking from every angle at once. Having navigated her own journey with OCD and anxiety while raising a daughter alone and caring for a mother with severe depression, she brings the kind of perspective that no textbook can teach. If you want to understand what is actually broken in how we support mental health and what we can each do about it, this is the episode to watch.
Carlos Laurrauri
Carlos Larrauri is a psychiatric nurse practitioner, a board member of NAMI National, the largest mental health advocacy organization in the United States, and a fellow at both the University of Michigan Law School and the Harvard Kennedy School. But what sets him apart is that he built all of that while living in recovery from schizophrenia. This is not a clinician speaking from the outside looking in. This is someone who has been on both sides of the conversation, and that makes everything he says worth listening to.
Leslie Todd
Leslie Todd has spent her life navigating anxiety from the inside, working as a caregiver for special needs children, and researching the psychological side of trauma and behavior in ways most of us never think to apply to ourselves. She brings something rare to this conversation: the perspective of someone who is both deeply studied in how the mind works and completely honest about how hard it still is to live with. If you have ever wondered whether your anxiety is rational or been dismissed for how you process something differently than everyone else around you, this episode was made for you.
Dr.Kranti Vorra
Dr. Kranti Vora is an obstetrician, a Johns Hopkins-trained public health expert, and a PhD in maternal and child health who has dedicated her career to women’s health policy in India and beyond. But what makes her voice on this topic so rare is that she has lived through a near-fatal pregnancy complication, postpartum trauma, and the very stigma she studies, all while navigating motherhood in a culture where mothers are expected to be nothing but joyful. If you want to understand what mental health during motherhood really looks like when no one is talking about it, this is the conversation to watch.
Jennifer Xenakis
Jennifer is a multi-award-winning educator who has taken one of the hardest childhoods you will hear described and turned it into a career built entirely on compassion, having won her program’s teaching excellence award three times and its outstanding contribution award ten times. She speaks about mental health, stigma, and self-worth not from a textbook but from decades of surviving poverty, dysfunction, and systems that wrote her off before she had a chance. If you have ever felt like where you came from determines where you are going, this episode will challenge everything you believe about that.
Sheyn Hosanee
Sheyn immigrated to Canada from Mauritius at ten years old, navigating cultural isolation, bullying, and the unique pressure on young men to never show vulnerability, all while building a career working with children with autism. He speaks about mental health from the inside of two worlds that rarely talk about it openly, as both a young man and someone raised between cultures where the stigma runs especially deep. If you have ever been told to just move on or felt like your struggles did not count, this episode is going to resonate with you.