I wanted to wish everyone who cares about child and youth mental health a happy new year – but then I wondered what that meant. When we start the new calendar year, we have images of a fresh start, a new chance, the slate wiped clean and ready to be filled with ideas of promise and success. But is that really where we are?

I don’t mean to shift gears into a morbid contemplation of how far we haven’t come in our efforts to help and heal those living with mental illness but is it trite or contrived to wish families and communities a happy new year when we are potentially staring at another bleak funding year and a gross lack of awareness of this issue and its impact on our society? YES! It is contrived but I am going to try and redeem my good wishes and say that they are a rallying cry for 2011!

It will be a happier new year if you commit to contacting one person who is not familiar with the issue and educating them.

It will be a happier new year if you share some of the amazing resources you have discovered with another parent, teacher, child or youth.

It will be a happier new year if you decide that this is the year you will write your story down (with the permission of the person that struggled with mental illness) and share it with a local media outlet during Children’s Mental Health week (May 1-8, 2011).

It will be a happier new year if you contact your local children’s mental health agency and find out what they are doing to build awareness and lobby for proper funding for the sector.

It truly will be a happier new year if this is the year that you decide that the only way to make this a happy new year is to be one of Ontario’s leading child and youth mental health advocates during the provincial election campaign.

That’s right. There is a provincial election in October and this is the number one reason that this can be a happy new year for families and communities struggling with the challenges of child and youth mental health. At no other time in the history of Ontario has this issue received so much attention and had the potential to be THE issue of the next provincial election.

If we were to come together and join advocacy campaigns (watch Parents for Children’s Mental Health in the coming months ), lobby provincial candidates and attend debates and write letters to local papers about the issue we would ensure that this issue is a focus for all parties. Our consistent demand must be increased funding, a streamlined system that works with education, youth justice and health, as well as a system that is strongly influenced by the voice of families.

All of us can be powerful advocates and make a profound impact on the politics of this province this year. It will be a truly happy new year when we do this and we do not succumb to the false idea that this is another bad year of underfunding and of children and youth falling through the cracks.

I spent many years as a parent advocate and I KNOW that families and community, when they demand what is right, can see funding increase and systems become more responsive. This election year can be this kind of happy new year for child and youth mental health!

Let me know how you plan to influence the politics of this provincial election! And Happy New Year!