Sharing lived experience with mental illness or mental health challenges is both difficult and courageous, especially when speaking to a group of your peers. It’s also meant to be a positive experience for the individual sharing. To ensure that happens, providing proper speaker support for someone looking to share their lived experience is necessary and important. You want them to feel safe, supported and confident when their moment arrives.

Speaker support isn’t a straightforward process, so for a more detailed and in-depth look at best practices we suggest you refer to the Mental Health Commission of Canada (MHCC) Headstrong Toolkit for Training Speakers.