 Well good morning everyone it's really wonderful to be with you today and it's literally heartwarming to be in front of 500 people, individuals that are making a difference and will certainly continue to make a difference with the mental health of our youth not only here in British Columbia but as across around the world really as individuals watch what we do here because in many ways we are in the cutting edge of how to take care of youth at risk. I want to also thank Gail Sparrow for her remarkable comments that really put into context what that First Nations group suffered and how they are resilient as individuals and how they support us and how we need to support them and their youth as many of them are in our schools and we hope more of them will be in our schools and universities as time progresses. I want to thank Minister Fleming and Minister Marx in the post-secondary sector for really playing tremendous leadership roles and addressing the challenges that our youth face today. I can tell you in my decades of experience in post-secondary education both north and south of the board that I have never seen a government that is more committed to making a difference in terms of the mental health of our youth. That includes the Premier and includes the ministers and includes individuals throughout government that I have a chance to speak with on a regular occasion. I also want to give a shout out to those here who are members of the authorities and who are superintendents and who are within schools. Many of you have welcomed me to your schools and I want to thank you for that and as President of the largest post-secondary institution in British Columbia our partnership our systems thinking is really what's needed to to take care of the continuum of life that we're privileged to welcome into our institutions. It's remarkable that the second annual conference has grown from 300 to 500. I'm just thinking about next year I calculate about 775 people via the third annual Congress and I'm probably having a bigger venue for that but as exciting as it is that's really what's needed to move the needle and to make a difference. In a topic which is incredibly important for this province for this nation for the University of British Columbia in fact for the world I don't need to say too much in this audience about how important the work that's before us is. We all know that mental health is a significant issue one in five Canadians one in four in certain sectors have mental health problems some of those actually have mental illnesses. It is a global problem it's a growing problem in the post-secondary sector in the K through 12 sector. We have many individuals suffering from various kinds of mental illnesses in school today from bipolar disorder to depression of varying degrees. It's a problem that grows every year. Before I had the privilege of coming back home three years ago some of you may know that I was the president of the University of Cincinnati in Ohio. We give you an idea how important it is south of the border president Barack Obama then president Barack Obama held two White House summits that I had privilege of being part of and thinking about the growing problem there. So the mental health of our youth is right up there with the opioid crisis with issues such as food insecurity and yes they are looking at what we're doing here in British Columbia. Mental health issues are especially relevant to young people as you heard. They are the most vulnerable people in our society and they need us to look after them. Gail Sparrow has commented about how she was strong and how she persevered and how her elders persevered without structured support is remarkable but as you know too many young people do not have that resiliency. Do not have that level of inner strength to deal with your challenges and it's for that reason that they need each and every one of us as part of the system. That's why it's so important to integrate mental health literacy and student well-being is everything that we do at all stages of education starting with kindergarten to post-secondary and as she said all the way into your senior citizen status. We all know that you never know when the curve ball is coming your way. We all know that a life trauma might affect any of us as happy and fulfilled and satisfied as we might feel today. We don't know what might come our way tomorrow and put our mental wellness of culture. So this is not a story about somebody else this is a story about you about your kids about your grandkids. It could affect anyone. It's for that reason that there should be no stigma about talking about this because we're not talking about unusual cases. We're talking about maybe you tomorrow. Statistics Canada reports that suicide is the ninth leading cause of death in Canada but in the one to 24 year group 20 to 25 percent of deaths are attributed to suicide and many of you know that so many more young people ideate about suicide attempt suicide and so the numbers are much larger than one in 20. Some of you may know from listening to me speak or watching one of my YouTube videos of a TEDx talk that I gave a year and a half ago that I speak from personal experience. No one will belabor it because this is not about me but the reason I bring up my own personal experience is because perhaps it will illustrate to you that this isn't somebody else's problem it's somebody that can affect anyone and also hopefully it will illustrate to you that individuals that are dealing with mental health issues is provided the right kind of support at the right time can actually recover and can function at a high level later in life. When I was 14 years old I tried to take my own life for a variety of reasons. Part of it had to do with not feeling like I fit in being the child of an immigrant family in a predominantly Caucasian upper middle class suburban area. Nobody knew that I was going to try to commit suicide at the age of 14. Part of it had to do with issues of self-esteem. Part of it had to do with abuse. One evening after watching the evening news with my parents and thinking about it for a number of weeks I went to the fridge in my kitchen. My parents are still watching TV. I grabbed a cold beer, went upstairs, went to the medicine cabinet, took the strongest medication I could find, put a rock behind the board. I took a handful of pills. I tried to take my own life at the age of 14. I'm not sure I even knew what I was doing and I was surprised when late in the afternoon the next day I woke up. I was still alive. You know there's a person that has a job of standing on the Golden Gate Bridge who tries to convince people thinking about jumping off that bridge not to jump. He talks about not only those people that he convinces not to jump, he also talks about some of the youngsters who jump and survive miraculously because most people who jump off the Golden Gate Bridge don't survive. One of the things he says is that in many cases those individuals the moment they jump the ones that actually do jump especially those who don't jump. Do you realize how much they value life and how happy they are those who do jump and survive? How happy they are that they're still alive. But to give you an idea of where I was emotionally at the age of 14 when I woke up the afternoon on that Saturday after trying to take my own life I wasn't happy to be alive. I didn't have a support network but for some reason I guess my incompetence I wasn't successful in taking. But the one thing that I hope for youngsters who are suffering right now in schools is that they don't feel alone. They don't have to endure whatever they're dealing with alone. That we build a system of support in the schools in the classrooms involving peers involving healthy dialogue about what's needed so that in the future 14 year olds in your schools will not suffer on their own. Now many years later I won't say how many decades later I am alive in front of you and I am now finally grateful that I woke up the next day. I would try one other time to take my life when I was a graduate student. There was a situation at the Yale University where over several months I tried to do an experiment over and over again and it failed over and over again. And the feelings of inadequacy came back to me and I thought I'm never going to amount to anything just like my parents had predicted. And so that was the second time. And finally I started to be seen at a relatively advanced age by mental health professionals who stood by me. I eventually found my faith and I could tell you that my faith and my involvement in local churches were really instrumental in helping me provide systemic support that I needed at a much earlier age. For a long time I kept my struggles to myself. As you know there is and there was an even stronger stigma about talking about mental illness and mental health issues. And we have to erase that stigma. Use that hashtag. Erase the stigma. Because if only in erasing that stigma can we get to every kid that feels alone. Can we convince them that there's no shame in talking about one's struggles. It's incredibly important to erase every vestige of stigma associated with talking about one's challenges. Like I said it could be you tomorrow. In my case it took decades because I was eventually diagnosed with a very mild form of bipolar disorder. It took me 25 years to get over it. It took psychotherapy and medication. But I think that for me a big part of my being able to live symptom free is a work-life balance. A focus on wellness. A focus on trying to ignore individuals who are naysayers. And having the courage to see a professional. The lesson in my story if you will is that if you have proper counseling and support it really is possible for you to move past even significant mental health issues. And to move back into a functioning. And in some cases that very fortunate. A high functioning life for the very demanding role. You know that support would be even more ideal if it occurred earlier. When kids are in school when they're 13, 14, 16, 18, 22. Because in that way lives would be saved. So many lives would be saved. An early diagnosis and treatment of mental health disorders is associated with better social academic and vocational outcomes. My dream is that there'll be many more people who can persevere and can grow up and realize the gifts that they have been given. We all know that untreated mental health issues and mental illness can have a negative impact on one's physical health but also one's future potential. It is for that reason that I'm inspired by the work that you all do and I'll tell you a little bit about what's happening in our Faculty of Education at the University of British Columbia. Something that's attracting people from around the world on a regular basis. And I hope that we can scale that up those programs up and other ones that are taking hold at our university. I hope that that can actually spread across this great nation of ours and around the world so that lives would be saved. The Faculty of Education has developed a mental health literacy program that's really received global attention. It's produced an online curriculum which is a resource for teachers around the globe. UBC's Human Early Learning Partnership or HELP, based in the School of Population and Public Health and the Faculty of Medicine, has long been a pioneer in children's well-being and development and has shown a clear light on mental health and social and emotional development and well-being. And our new Director of the School of Population and Public Health, Peter Berman, is passionate about enhancing our leadership responsibilities for the province and elsewhere in this very important project. I'm more than excited by this province's leadership role in renewing the curriculum and emphasizing personal and social competence, including a focus on positive mental health. It's something we've been working at at UBC for over a decade, investing more and more every year on our thrive program, really focusing on wellness within our residence halls and training students for peer support. These are things that have been scaling up at our university over the past year and a half. Students within our professional schools have come to me and we're funding them through our residence halls, through our campus security to create a number of individuals that are properly trained as students to respond to crises among their peers. It's something that has been tried at other institutions but hopefully we can grow the numbers of students that are really trained in mental health literacy to provide first-line support for their fellow students. We just hired into our residence halls 24-7 counselors that are there to be able to provide support after hours, not Monday through Friday, nine to five. And we are so grateful to the province for being one of the first regions in the world to provide 24-7 counseling for post-secondary students. There's a good reason that the world is watching what we do and if we share what we do and what you learn and what you create in this two-day conference, the impact cannot be overestimated. As a university president I witness plenty of evidence that today's students, students of any age, can and do thrive and do recover from mental health issues given the proper support. There's no secret here, we all know what needs to happen and I'm going to fly to Ontario today to talk about hopefully other provinces here following the lead of the province of British Columbia. I'm going to fly to Tibet later this year to encourage them to do the same for their government leaders to commit the same kind of support that DC has done to look after the next generation. Today, young people are much more aware of their mental health than when I was young. And that's a good thing. The Bell Let's Talk initiative with millions of individuals mobilized on an annual basis, raising money for that support is a miracle. When young people realize they're not alone, experiencing mental health issues, they are better able to speak up, to talk, to have that very important personal connection with someone who is trained in what needs to happen to put them on the path to recovery. Everyone in this room, whether you're an educator, a politician, a health administrator, a superintendent, a counselor, a member of first nations, we have to truly come together as a constellation of individuals that are truly motivated from this day forward to make a difference. We must encourage and enable our institutions to offer their students the support they need, and yes, we need to commit resources to make it possible. We know what needs to happen. We know what has to happen in our schools, in our universities. We know what needs to happen in terms of investments in online resources, and we have to work together to convince individuals at every level of government and within our institutions and within our school systems to invest in those programs so we can save lives. We must create environments that lend themselves to balanced, healthy lifestyles, and we need to think about ways in which academic programs across the elementary, high school, university, and professional school systems truly form systems. The biggest challenges of the world require system thinking, and that's why this conference is so important. I want to thank you for inviting me to speak with you about my story and about what we can do together. We at UBC are ready to be at your service. We are privileged to be the largest university in this province and one of the largest in the world. We have remarkable resources in the intellect of our faculty, our physical plans, and the brilliance of our students. And the biggest message I want to give you today is that we at University of British Columbia view ourselves as part of your system. Thank you very much. Thank you. Good luck. Safe travels.