mental illness health initiative

Let’s Talk – Mental Illness Health Initiative

Bell’s mental illness health initiative, occurring on January 25th, 2017, aims to help remove the stigma around mental health. One in every five Canadians will experience some form of mental illness across their lifetime, and it’s a subject that we’re often reluctant to talk about, even with our loved ones. Olympic champion Clara Hughes is leading the way for Bell with a high profile campaign each year to reduce stigma and raise money to fight mental illness.

Initiatives such as Clara’s Big Ride have helped Bell expand its efforts to get Canadians educated in the national conversation about improving mental health. Bell’s Let’s Talk program is the biggest commitment to mental health in the country and focuses on supporting research, fighting stigma, improving access to care and ensuring psychological health and safety in the workplace.

On January 27th, 2016, Canadians responded in record numbers to the 6th annual Bell Let’s Talk day. The company donated an extra five cents for each of the 125 million long distance and mobile calls, tweets, texts and Facebook shares recorded on that day. All totalled, Bell donated over 6 million extra dollars to mental health initiatives. Clara’s efforts are supported by business, political and entertainment leaders across Canada who share their own struggles with mental illness as a way of encouraging others to get involved.

Bell’s initial commitment to Let’s Talk, announced in 2010, was 50 million dollars. Since then, it has grown to almost 80 million dollars on the strength of enthusiastic and generous response of Canadians on the first five Bell Let’s Talk Days. September 22, 2015, Bell marked the fifth anniversary of Bell Let’s Talk, extending it for a further 5 years and increasing Bell’s total funding commitment for Canadian mental health to at least $100 million.

Investigation Hotline is a strong supporter of mental health awareness and we do our best to contribute to the removal of stigma surrounding the issue.