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Dear colleagues and Compassionate Community advocates,

The Covenant Health Palliative Institute is pleased to announce the release of My Wishes Alberta: Planning for My Care. My Wishes Alberta is a fillable workbook that helps people identify what’s important to them in their life, health, and personal care. It guides people through the “think” step of advance care planning, prompts them to start conversations with their health care providers and the people who matter most to them, and leads them to additional advance care planning resources.

Completing this workbook will help prepare Albertans to make decisions about their care—now or in the future—and help equip others to make decisions on their behalf if they’re unable to do so themselves.

Thinking and talking about what matters most:
• Gives people a say in their care even if they’re unable to speak for themselves.
• Reduces conflict and stress when care decisions need to be made.
• Helps health care providers offer the best possible care.
My Wishes Alberta is adapted from Canadian Virtual Hospice (CVH)’s Coming Full Circle booklet and was developed by the Covenant Health Palliative Institute in partnership with CVH and a national circle of Elders and Knowledge Carriers. It also benefitted from the advice of an Alberta working group. Thank you to everyone who contributed to the development of this resource.

Did you find this workbook helpful? A link to an online survey is included at the end of the workbook; we’d love to hear what you think.

Please use My Wishes Alberta and share it widely with any organizations or individuals who might be interested. Thank you for your support!

The Palliative Institute

For more information, please visit this link: https://compassionatealberta.ca/plan-ahead/my-wishes-alberta-workbook

What are Dreams?

A dream is a succession of images, ideas, emotions, and sensations that usually occur involuntarily in the mind during certain stages of sleep. Humans spend about two hours dreaming per night, and each dream lasts around 5 to 20 minutes, although the dreamer may perceive the dream as being much longer than this.

Dreaming mainly occurs during the REM (rapid eye movement) stage of sleep when brain activity is high and resembles that of being awake. People typically have multiple dreams each night that grow longer as sleep draws to a close. They typically involve elements from waking life, such as known people or familiar locations, but they also often have a fantastical feel like people living out scenarios that would never be possible in real life. Lucid dreaming is a state of dreaming where the dreamer is aware that they are asleep, but is able
to control events within their dreams, to some extent. Lucid dreamers report willing themselves to fly,
or do the impossible.

The History of Dream Interpretation

There is no consensus on the interpretation of dreams. Dream interpretation emerged in 1899 as a field of psychological study when Sigmund Freud published “The Interpretation of Dreams”. He theorized that dreams reflect the dreamer’s unconscious mind and that dream content is shaped by unconscious wish fulfillment. Today, most experts disagree with Freud’s conclusions, and some don’t believe dreams signify anything at all.

A study found that people attribute more importance to dream content than to similar thought content that occurs while they are awake. For example, people were more likely to report that they would intentionally miss their flight if they dreamt of their plane crashing than if they thought of their plane crashing the night before flying (while awake).

Why do we Dream?

This is still being studied, but the purpose may not be to send us messages about self-improvement or the future, as many historically believed. Some researchers now believe that dreaming mediates memory consolidation, problem solving, and mood regulation, a process a little like overnight therapy. People who are sleep deprived also tend to be dream-deprived, spending less time dreaming and perhaps not remembering dreams as well.

Nightmares

A nightmare is an unpleasant dream that can cause a strong negative emotional response from the mind, typically fear or horror, but also despair, anxiety, and great sadness. Sufferers usually awaken in a state of distress and may be unable to return to sleep for a prolonged period of time. Nightmares can create feelings of terror, anxiety, or despair, and lead to psychological distress or sleep problems, like insomnia. Research has identified a range of causes for nightmares, including post-traumatic stress and anxiety—especially the presence of generalized anxiety disorder, dissociation, and physiological changes.

Lead by Peter Kellett PhD RN, the Migration, Gender, and Health team is pursuing research and intervention projects focused on addressing the gender related challenges faced by migrants to new countries, and particularly migrants to Canada.

Click here to read the article!

Ischemic heart disease or disease of the vessels that supply your heart with blood and oxygen is the second leading cause of death in Canada. It is the most common type of cardiovascular disease. Some people think that it is just a disease “older people” get; others picture a man clutching his chest, as often seen in movies, when they imagine what a heart attack might look like. This is in fact, not always true.

Your heart is made up of muscle, and its job is to pump blood around the entire body. Think about if you are running a marathon; after some time, you get tired and you want to stop and rest. Once you rest, you can go on. The heart, on the other hand, cannot do this. It is pumping blood 24 hours a day to keep you alive.

The heart is sometimes unable to do this because the arteries providing the heart with blood flow and oxygen get blocked. When blood cannot reach the different parts of the heart, a section of the heart gets tired and will not be able to function properly or be able to provide adequate blood to the various organs in the body. This is then felt like a pain in your chest. Some people, however, do not feel the same type of pain, such as people with diabetes, or those who have had a heart transplant. Even women and men tend to have different types of pain!

Heart disease can impact people of various ages, genders, and ethnicities, although some may be at higher risk than others, such as those with Diabetes. In terms of its presentation, it varies widely across different groups.
It impacts men and women differently in terms of its presentation, treatment, and recovery. In fact, many research studies are ongoing, investigating exactly how different a heart attack presents in women versus men. Some risk factors you are born with and cannot change (e.g., age, gender, family history, certain ethnicities such as Indigenous, African, or South Asian), and other factors are things we can change by altering some habits and/or seeking help (e.g., high blood pressure, elevated cholesterol, tobacco/excessive alcohol use, obesity, sedentary lifestyle, depression, and stress).

The good news is you can reduce your risk of acquiring ischemic heart disease. Taking care of yourself is an essential part of this process, like eating well and maintaining a healthy weight, getting regular daily exercise (≥150 minutes per week), getting adequate sleep, avoiding smoking and excessive alcohol use, and practicing self-care and maintaining a positive mental health.

In conclusion, take the stairs instead of the elevator, avoid those sugary treats, do not immediately sit down after you eat, go for regular walks (at least 30-minutes) around your home or within your apartment/condo building, and do these types of preventative strategies with your family and friends. This will improve your mood and keep you motivated. We are better together than we are alone. Help your friends and family live longer lives with you, and with healthier hearts.

Introducing the Rural Development Networks’ ABCD pilot project! The ABCD project aims to destigmatize dementia and raise awareness around dementia prevention while supporting rural Albertan communities in the implementation of dementia-inclusive initiatives.

Click here to watch the Mini-Documentary!

Do you have a New Year’s resolution? How does improving your mental health sound?

Your mind and body cooperate powerfully. The way you think affects how you feel, and vice versa. When you feel stressed, your muscles get tense and you might experience headaches and stomach problems; a physical reaction called “fight or flight”. Feeling stressed all the time could result in high blood pressure and affect your heart. Likewise, when you’re in pain you may become distressed or anxious. However, when you relax your mind and body, you no longer produce the hormones that create stress which allows you to return to a state of calm, physically and mentally.

Mental illness or mental health? What is the relationship to one another? They are separate yet interconnected concepts. They need to be looked at, measured and responded to differently. According to Statistics Canada, 1 in 3 Canadians will experience a mental illness or substance use disorder in their lifetime. What about the mental health of the rest of the population?

Mental illnesses are disorders that can be caused by factors like genetics or brain chemistry. They complicate our thinking, mood and behaviours hence severely negatively impacting the way we function in our lives. Different mental illnesses present differently and some of them take effort to work through and diagnose. Although mental illnesses can affect people of all ages, genders, ethnicities and social classes, many go undiagnosed. Depression, anxiety, and OCD are just a few examples of the many mental illnesses that people may suffer from. These conditions need to be treated for one to function optimally in their community.

On the other hand, mental health is a positive concept, it is all about mental well-being. It relates to our ability to live a satisfying and fulfilling life, achieve our goals while coping with stressors and dealing with everyday challenges. Mental health affects all people. It’s important to realize that one might have a mental illness such
as depression, but with the help of medications and support from various resources, they could have good mental health. Furthermore, poor mental health is not always due to mental illness, life events or stressors
can affect anyone’s mental health, whether or not a mental illness is present.