‘womenmind an opportunity to… lift up the voices of women living with mental illness and advance women in science’
The Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH) has received $6.5 million in donations for its womenmind community program that will help close the gender gap in mental health and help women advance in the sciences, according to the research centre.
womenmind is a community of philanthropists tackling unique gender issues in mental health, said CAMH. The program will fuel efforts focused on accelerating research discoveries related to improving the mental health of girls and women and supporting female-identifying researchers to become leaders in the sciences.
“Health research has overlooked the biological and socially determined issues unique to women,” said Catherine Zahn, president and CEO of CAMH. “At CAMH, we have worked hard toward gender parity in recruiting, retaining and supporting our women scientists and research that addresses mental illness and its manifestations in women. We are leading important projects focused on women’s mental health, and today, 40 per cent of our researchers are women.”
$5 million of the total funding was a gift from Sandi and Jim Treliving and family. “This is a gift from our family to women everywhere,” said Sandi Treliving. “womenmind is an opportunity for us to bring women in philanthropy together through a shared vision, lift up the voices of women living with mental illness and advance women in science. There’s no better place to do all of that than at CAMH.”
The other $1.5 million was from the Hudson’s Bay Foundation. “Through our $1.5-million donation, we will work to scale the womenmind initiative nationally through a series of events in our stores, designed to spark conversation about closing the gender gaps in mental health,” said Iain Nairn, president of Hudson’s Bay.
In its first five years, womenmind will raise funds to support initiatives such as recruiting new female scientists, providing early career start-up support and offering mentoring programs for women in science, according to CAMH. Members of the community will also be exposed to mentoring and networking opportunities.
