THUNDER BAY —The Thunder Bay Community Auditorium and Canadian Mental Health Association are partnering during this winter season to emphasize the benefits of live performances and mental health.
Through the Tune Up Your Mental Health initiative, the two organizations will give away free tickets to select performances, and encourage individuals to enjoy the therapeutic benefits of attending a show.
“The Community Auditorium was the one to reach out, because they had noticed that going out to live concerts or seeing live performances was having a positive effect on people’s mental health and their happiness. They reached out to CMHA to try and not only explain that, but also try and give people a little bit of an opportunity to go out and see some shows through ticket giveaways,” said Derek Martens, addiction specialist at CMHA Thunder Bay.
Martens said getting out to see a live show is a way to feel a sense of community, which is a fundamental need for humans.
“January, February and March, we've had a lack of sunlight, we've had a lack of being able to get outside and do the things that we like to do. It's cold, it's dreary, and these things have a subconscious effect on our mental health.
“That's why you hear about things like the winter blues, or people with seasonal affective disorder. Getting out and seeing a concert or seeing a play is a way to break that isolation that you've been experiencing and it's a real low-barrier way of doing it because it's not like you have to go into a crowded restaurant and talk with everybody that's in there, right?”
You can experience a sense of community and at the same time practice mindfulness by watching and participating in the show, Martens said.
“It creates a drop of different types of endorphins in your brain, the types of things we generally need to make us happy, like dopamine, and it can also help lower cortisol levels in your brain.”
People don't realize they're creating a real sense of community by being in a room with a group of like-minded people enjoying the same thing at that time, Martens said.
“This partnership shows that the people at the auditorium and others like them are thinking about our community, not just in ways of what they can make for profits by having shows, but they're actually thinking about the people that come to their shows, what they're experiencing and what their life is like," said Martens.
“As professionals, when we're dealing with people in different sessions, one of the things you go over with people is self-care, right? You go over what is it that makes you happy in life, because a lot of the times when we're depressed, the things that make us happy are the first things to go. We start isolating, which means we're not going out and doing things we enjoy anymore."
“It's great that they're thinking of it because it's that self-care piece, this is like a way of thinking outside the box for your mental health,” he said
Martens said going out to se a concert or a show is a resource in Thunder Bay that is underutilized, or not typically looked at in that type of light.