Our Initiatives
Visions Journal
The BC Partners produce the award-winning Visions: BC’s Mental Health and Substance Use Journal. Published quarterly, the journal is a forum for sharing knowledge, perspectives, and experiences on mental health and substance use or addiction.
All content is written by and for people with lived experience with mental health and addiction, their families, service providers, leaders and decision makers. Topics include a range of recurring and timely issues such as recovery, wellness, work, housing, and more.
Timely content for a tumultuous year
In the past year, we produced four thematic issues:
Rural, remote, and northern communities
Covid-19
Systemic racism
Responding to feelings
Strong circulation numbers
Visions continues to reach more British Columbians than ever before, both in print and online.
- 22,650 copies disseminated
- 4,313 subscribers
- 45% of Visions subscribers say they share their copy with an average of 5 people
Web (HTML, PDF, epub)
- 2,041 email subscribers
- 10,110 email opens of 2020/21 issues
- 890K pageviews
Promoting effective governance
4 – engaged editorial board meetings
5 – engaged and responsive governance committee meetings
Current and relevant
The Covid-19 issue was a direct response to the global pandemic and widespread societal concerns about mental health and substance use issues.
The systemic racism issue was Visions’ response to widespread societal concerns that emerged from the Black Lives Matter movement including both conversations and actions on injustice, inequity, and inequality.
Highlights
What we learned in 2020/21
Visions continues to be a well-respected and credible source of mental health and substance use information for its readers, including the general public and service providers. Increased BC Partners engagement and collaboration – sharing networks, brainstorming, promotion, and collective expertise – continue to enrich Visions.
From the leader survey, we learned:
- Readers value the diversity of perspectives in Visions. High-quality, non-judgmental articles support their MHSU journeys and help to destigmatize MHSU concerns
- Readers would like to see Visions published and promoted more often, with more visual content
While we are attuned to reader desires, we were unable to incorporate all suggested changes due to existing funding, capacity, and resources.
Readers responded positively to issues on Covid-19 and racism. This highlights how Visions can be topical and relevant by responding to community needs for MHSU information and support in a timely way.
Future recommendations:
- Continuing to ensure a wide range of contributors through BCP networks will enable Visions to remain a source of credible and well-respected MHSU information
- As a result of our reader survey, we identified three focus areas for 2021/22:
- increase promotion and marketing, including social media engagement
- make Visions stories and resources accessible across a range for formats
- improve the Visions experience for current readers by increasing visuals in print and digital formats, and better targeting print copy readers
- BCP must balance reader enthusiasm for changes, the evolving online media landscape, and expectations with our available capacity and resources. To do this, we should develop a clear sustainability and development plan that addresses these issues
- BCP should continue to address emerging issues whenever possible to ensure relevance and reader engagement
