Chronic Pain and Your Mental Health

There are 185 000 Nova Scotians currently living with chronic pain and very little supports for their emotional and mental health. This group will provide a space and resource within the community where persons living with chronic pain and mental health challenges can come together in a peer led support group about chronic pain and mental health. The group will meet weekly and virtually over Zoom for 12 weeks.

To provide a safe, accepting, and comfortable space for people living with chronic pain to meet, share, and learn.

To provide supports online to people throughout Nova Scotia who are isolated for many reasons, from covid, their own chronic illness as examples. The decision to be online is in understanding the unpredictable and changing nature of living with chronic pain to be more accessible in meeting their needs and supporting them in being able to attend events. Not all can attend in person, whereas they can attend online.

To provide hope to those who attend, hope being the foundation of peer support.

To begin to create chronic pain mental health space in Nova Scotia and stimulate connection and communication within this community. To create an emotional and mental health peer support group that begins to bridge the gap in chronic pain and mental health care in Nova Scotia

Providing support to individuals at an increased risk for suicide and suicidal ideation due to their experience and lack of support with chronic pain and mental illness.

Worth Living has the experience, please see below, to complete this project. The project will also be led by two co-facilitators with experience facilitating a group on chronic pain and mental health and with lived experience of chronic pain

Ideas for topics:

• Identity and how to figure out “who you are now” after a diagnosis
• Advocacy for getting proper medical care
• How to build networks
• Talking about grief and how it impacts us in our lives (as you will experience a type of grief that is unfamiliar)
• How to navigate relationship imbalances - or how to avoid them
• How to seek a support system and strategies on how to ask for help (when you are not used to asking)
• Self-care is not selfish - how to nourish your body, mind, and soul
• How to ask for work accommodations and some discussion about disclosure

If you have any questions, feel free to reach out to amber.elizabeth.chinn@gmail.com