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Use the links below to view the details for the 2026 MHOP Conference:

**Please Note: As the conference planning team continues to fine tune details for the Conference, timing and content is subject to change!!

Brandon University Campus Map

MHOP 2026 Agenda at a Glance

MHOP 2026 Concurrent Presentation Schedule

MHOP 2026 Presentation Abstracts

MHOP 2026 Full Conference Program

Rebeccah Love
EVE PARADE (2022): Psychosis, Civic Responsibility and the Imagination
Short film screening and Discussion

Join Toronto-based independent filmmaker and mental health advocate Rebeccah Love for the screening of her short film, Eve Parade. Rebeccah has lived with Bipolar 1 since she was 18 year old. Since recovering, she has devoted her life to writing, directing and producing films relating to women’s experiences with love, misogyny, psychosis, suicidality and creativity. She has produced eight short films and one feature, which have played in film festivals across the country, been reviewed in the Globe and Mail and have also played in mental health units in hospitals across Toronto.

In her keynote address, Rebeccah will recount her journey living with Bipolar Disorder, losing her mobility, turning to storytelling as a soothing balm but also as form of activism for the mad community. Her short film ‘Eve Parade’ is a Utopian vision that looks at illness within the context of community, imagining a neighbourhood where all neighbours are comfortable with crisis care. Touching on institutional violence, police brutality and universal concepts of love, ‘Eve Parade’ is a playful narrative that imagines a world where we can embrace those who live with illness with kindness and an emphasis on safety.

 

Russell Purdy
From Recovery to Reform: Lived Experience Leading Systemic Change in Addiction and Mental Health

Recovery is not a destination but a way of life, and for those of us who live it, it becomes the foundation upon which we build our professional purpose. In this presentation, Russell Purdy, Executive Director of Beccarian Correctional Care, will share his personal journey of long-term recovery since January 3, 2017, and how lived experience has informed his leadership in the fields of addiction and mental health.

From entering treatment and transitional recovery housing to becoming a front-line worker and eventually helping to establish Alberta’s first Recovery Community under the new provincial model, Russell’s story reflects both the vulnerability of recovery and the resilience it builds. He has worked across public, private, and hospital-based treatment settings, co-developed Canada’s first Recovery Coach Academy curriculum, and now leads an organization embedding therapeutic and recovery-oriented models within correctional systems.

This talk will explore how recovery capital, purpose, and professional collaboration can reshape not only individual lives but institutional approaches. With a focus on integrating lived experience into system design, Russell will discuss how person-centered care, trauma-informed practice, and culturally grounded recovery systems can disrupt cycles of harm and inspire systemic transformation, from the prairies to prisons.

 

Dr. Caroline Tait
“I’m not from anywhere”: did the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s Calls to Action find their way into the Canadian criminal justice system?

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) of Canada released a final report in 2015 that includes strategic “Calls to Action”. This presentation focuses on the impact of the TRC Calls to Action in health and justice, specifically asking whether “truth” and “reconciliation” found its way into the criminal justice system specifically to the lives of vulnerable Indigenous peoples involved in the system? The objectives of the presentation are: 1. increase understandings about the lives of Indigenous peoples living with mental illness and addictions who are caught up in the criminal justices system; 2. explore how the TRC Calls to Action directly or indirectly impact their lives; and,
3. to present critical Indigenous studies as a necessary and important companion to the creation, implementation and evaluation of large scale strategies that seek to advance the rights and interests of Indigenous peoples in Canada.