Let's talk...but who goes first?

Clara Hughes, a dual-season Olympian, is the only athlete in history to win multiple medals at both the summer and winter Olympic Games. She also knows what it’s like to weather more than one season when it comes to mental health. She joins Dr. Horton to talk about her decision to pursue public advocacy, and to discuss why performance-driven cultures like medicine and sport need personal narratives to help us get past stigma and back to health.

Six-time Olympic medalist and mental health Advocate, Clara Hughes is the only athlete in Olympic history to win multiple medals in both summer and winter Games, representing Canada in both speed skating and cycling. In addition, she served as Team Canada’s flag-bearer at the 2010 Vancouver Olympic Games.

As the founding spokesperson for Bell Let’s Talk, a campaign designed to end the stigma attached to mental illness, Hughes helped jumpstart the conversation on mental wellness. In 2014, she completed a 110-day national bicycle tour through every province and territory in Canada called “Clara’s Big Ride”. She covered more than 11,000 kilometres, visited 105 communities, and hosted over 235 events to raise awareness for mental health. She is also the author of the bestselling memoir, Open Heart, Open Mind.

Over the course of her distinguished career, Hughes has won countless awards and accolades. She was awarded the International Olympic Committee’s Sport and Community Trophy, honoured with a star on Canada’s Walk of Fame, inducted into Canada’s Sports Hall of Fame, and named a member of the Order of Manitoba and an Officer of the Order of Canada.

JILLIAN HORTON, M.D., is an award-winning medical educator, writer, musician and podcaster. A former Associate Dean at the University of Manitoba, she has cared for thousands of patients in an inner-city hospital, and now works to provide care to people living with addiction.  She is the winner of the prestigious 2020 AFMC–Gold Foundation Humanism award, recognizing her as a national thought leader in medical education and the delivery of compassionate and humane care. As a teacher of mindfulness, she is sought after by doctors at all stages of their careers, and she leads the development of national programming in physician health for Joule, a subsidiary of the Canadian Medical Association. Her writing about medicine appears frequently in the LA Times, the Globe and Mail, and the Toronto Star, and her first book, We Are All Perfectly Fine, now a national best seller, was released by HarperCollins Canada in Feb 2021.
 

*You can find all previous Arts, Medicine & #Life talks as podcasts here.