Family Caregiving, Peer Support and Mental Health and Addiction Challenges
November 27, 2012
Hosted by Dr. Gordon Atherley
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Guest Information
Episode Description
Steve Kalaydjian channels his energy to mental health after 15 years of working in information technology. He describes his own experience with family caregiving for problems of mental and physical health and of addiction challenges. He explains his voluntary work in peer support for mental health and addiction challenges. He describes the challenges and their consequences which he and his family experienced. He discusses his family’s experience of getting help. He says what he’s learned about help most needed by family caregivers and their families experiencing problems of mental health and of addiction, and about the ways it’s provided. He says what more help he’d like to see provided by the healthcare and social-services systems to family caregivers and their families experiencing the challenges of mental health and addiction problems. He shares his message for healthcare and social-service professionals and his message of hope for family caregivers and their family members.
Family Caregivers Unite!
Archives Available on VoiceAmerica Variety Channel
Family caregivers are the people who provide care to partners, parents, children, brothers, sisters, cousins, friends, neighbors and even co-workers. They are the people who provide care when everyone else has gone home. They are the people who organize the functioning of the home for the person with special needs, and for the family as a whole. They are the coordinators of care, the managers of appointments, the preventers of loneliness, and the makers of decisions even to the point of Power of Attorney. And they are so often people who themselves are burdened with their own health challenges and who may be in only marginally better health than the persons to whom they are providing family caregiving.
Dr. Gordon Atherley
Dr Gordon Atherley holds the British equivalent of the Canadian PhD and MD degrees, and LLD, Honoris Causa, from Canada’s Simon Fraser University. His awards include Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, UK. His medical specialties are occupational medicine and public health.
As first President and Chief Executive Officer of the Canadian Centre for Occupational Health and Safety, the Canadian equivalent of the US National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health, he led the creation of Canada’s electronic information service in occupational health and safety, now used in more than 40 countries.
In academia, he held senior, tenured, full-time positions, including departmental chair, in university faculties of physics, engineering, and medicine. He is the author of a textbook and numerous articles and publications.
Since retiring from medical practice, he’s built up Greyhead Associates, which critically researches the safety, effectiveness and fairness of health services for persons with special needs.
Through Virtual Care International, a company of which he’s President, he’s involved in providing sensible technology to family caregivers to help them with their responsibilities, workloads, and concerns.
Now an activist, he urges family caregivers to unite because, more and more, it’s not just their families who depend on them, it’s also the healthcare system as a whole, as it struggles to meet more and more needs of more and more people.
