Photo by: Pathstone Mental Health
Mental health help is being visually represented through Pathstone Mental Health’s Wellness Wall inSTALLation Series.
Pathstone Mental Health is a children’s mental health service in the Niagara Region that strives for mental wellness for all children, youth and families.
Pathstone’s website reads,
“mental illness in young children, pre-teens, and adolescents is widespread and often goes undetected,” with their mission directly supporting this claim through mainly free-of-charge services.
Recently, Pathstone unveiled a new way to tackle mental health through Wellness Wall installations.
Pathstone’s Wellness Wall InSTALLation Series can be found in various public restrooms and walls around the Niagara Region. Small motivational messages on posters are placed inside public stalls and big, bright, colorful wellness-related art on public walls.
The motivational mental health posters, which can be purchased online for people to spread mental health help, contain phrases such as “be yourself, everyone else is taken” and “all bodies are good bodies,” to give people a motivational boost during their day.
The placing of the messages in restrooms and walls is strategic:
“This series brings mental health strategies and motivational messages into the most private and intimate places, and could be at a time when someone isn’t feeling okay,” reads their website.
Pathstone states that, thanks to buy-ins from cities and towns across the region, Wellness Stalls will be found in libraries, arenas, pools, community centres, town halls and wherever their walk-in clinics are located.
Scanning the QR code located on their poster in their wellness stalls direct users to Pathstone’s walk-in clinics, which are open from Monday to Friday. Their crisis and support line services also show up, where mental health help is offered 24-7.
On Tuesday, Sept. 27, Pathstone Mental Health unveiled a 90-foot bright and colorful Wellness Wall art stretch of mental health strategy and motivational messages in the Pen Centre. The wall is located a few steps past the mall’s third entrance, directly across Mark’s.
The Wellness Wall art also contains information on how to connect with the organization. Another purpose of the wellness wall art is for people to take photos and share it on social media, which in turn promotes the message of mental health support.
The organization’s Instagram page says the following in a post regarding the wellness wall art in the mall:
“There are five snappable, shareable, gram-worthy designs, and we welcome shoppers to POP into our installation to snap and share with other, using the hashtag #WellnessWalls.”
Wellness artwork and stall installations are a fun, cool new way to share the importance of mental well-being and various resources for people going through hard times. By the looks of it, they are here to stay.
Pathstone Mental health service’s crisis and support line is reachable 24/7 at 1-800-263-4944. Their walk-in-clinic locations can be found here.