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Hi! I'm Em Mittertreiner, a community organizer and psychology student who lives with autoimmune disease and chronic mental illness. This website contains guidance—from a patient's perspective—on accessing health care services in British Columbia.
This guide is non-comprehensive and ever-evolving; I have been compiling these resources since 2019, and new information is added based on requests I receive from community members and/or my own needs.
DISCLAIMER: I am not a doctor or medical professional, and this website is not officially attached to any organization or institution. I maintain this toolkit because I know that health care navigation can feel like a full-time job for folks from marginalized communities, especially those living with chronic or stigmatized illness. As a member of Vancouver's trans, disabled, and East Asian communities, I am intimately familiar with how ableism, transphobia, and White supremacy can act to gate-keep health care services; my goal is to help community members navigate these systemic barriers to health care produced by our inequitable health care system.
Who is this toolkit for? You will find this toolkit useful if you or a loved one are feeling unwell. Right now the page caters mostly to mental health but I hope to expand to physical health soon as well. You will be able to access information about your symptoms, self-management strategies and other informational resources, as well as regional phone and online crisis chats, and local treatment programs specific to British Columbia. For those interested in exploring mutual aid and peer support as alternatives to institutional care, check out the Healing Justice 101 section.
My work, learning, and community organizing takes place on the unceded homelands of the Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), SÉ™lÌ“ÃlwÉ™taÊ”/Selilwitulh (Tsleil-Waututh) and xÊ·məθkÊ·É™yÌ“É™m (Musqueam) Nations. While institutionalized at psychiatric hospitals across Vancouver, I have witnessed the blatant violation of Indigenous patients' rights to equitable health care, including racial stereotyping by clinicians, disparaging comments from nursing staff, and denial of access to ancestral and cultural healing practices. My community organizing in the realms of climate and disability justice have been heavily informed by these experiences, and as a future health care provider, I will always seek to address and uproot the colonial violence embedded within BC's inpatient psychiatry system.
Indigenous resources for mental health and trauma
Adult crisis and long-term outpatient services
Prepare to talk to your doctor
Accessing professional services
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