Mental Health Foundation of Nova Scotia gives out $1.25M in grants

The Mental Health Foundation of Nova Scotia is pictured.

The Mental Health Foundation of Nova Scotia is giving out 67 grants this year, totaling $1.25 million.

The foundation aims to spread funding across the province to help with access to care and support.

President and CEO of the organization Starr Cunningham spoke with Crystal Garrett on the set of CTV Your Morning Atlantic, visiting a newsroom she spent much of her career in.

Cunningham emphasized the importance of connection.

“It keeps us tethered to community, and community is vitally important,” she said.

“People think that we’re really well connected now because we all have cellphones and, you know, we’re staying connected through social media, but that’s not the type of connection we’re talking about.”

The kind of connections the Mental Health Foundation focuses on involve getting people into their communities and interacting with other people.

“Knowing that they’re not alone,” Cunningham added.

The foundation offers grants twice a year and they welcome applications from all over Nova Scotia.

“We find organizations that support African and Indigenous Nova Scotians, 2SLGBTQIA+, youth, men, you name it, and we’re funding projects to really create a sense of belonging,” said Cunningham.

She mentioned she’d noticed a trend that more people want community connection, seeking events in their area.

“Having a meal together, singing together, music therapy,” she noted.

One event the foundation supports is Camp Believe, which operates in partnership with Brigadoon Village.

“We fund children to go there, children who have a parent who lives with mental illness, to give them a chance to connect with other young people who know what that’s like.”

While conversations around mental health aren’t as taboo as they once were, there is still a stigma barrier.

“We see it everyday. We see it even among health care professionals and in hospital settings. The stigma is real, but we need to break free from that, and the way we can do that is by talking,” Cunningham said.

“I live with mental illness, I didn’t say that when I worked at CTV,” she added. “I spent 23 years here in this newsroom trying to hide the fact that I was struggling many days.”

But now, she said working with the Mental Health Foundation she speaks openly about it.

“I can share my experience, and by doing that, hopefully allow someone else to know, Starr can talk about it and be okay, be able to continue with her life and be a wife and a mother and an employee at the Mental Health Foundation, maybe I can, too.”

For Cunningham, the hardest part about the foundation’s work is having to be selective about all the grants they receive.

“That’s the toughest part of the job. The toughest part is saying no to grants that are worthy, so we do our best to make sure that we’re, you know, spreading the funding all across the province,” she said.

For those who want to help, donations can be made to The Mental Health Foundation of Nova Scotia and volunteer positions are available.

For more Nova Scotia news, visit our dedicated provincial page