Board of Directors

Kathleen Mochnacki lives in Richmond Hill, Ontario, and supports a family member with psychosis. A trained social worker, she was instrumental in developing Home on the Hill Supportive Housing and sits on the York Region Homelessness Community Board, the Implementation Committee of the Affordable Housing Strategy of Richmond Hill, and the Richmond Hill Supportive Housing Collaboration. She is also a member of the High Support Housing Advisory Committee and the PWLE–High Support Housing Study at CAMH. She believes that properly managed supportive housing is a necessary part of the continuum of care for people with severe mental illnesses.

Susan Inman is the mother of a daughter who has been living with schizophrenia for 24 years. She has written about mental illness policies for a variety of publications including the Vancouver Province, the Sun, the Tyee, Huffington Post Canada, Psychiatric Times, Psychiatric Services and BC CMHA’s Visions.

I am a retired administrative justice worker. I hold bachelor of arts degrees in psychology and human justice. My lived experience advocating for a family member with a serious mental illness led me to focus my academic and community activities on working to eliminate the adverse effects of the inappropriate application of public policy on the circumstances of people living with serious mental illnesses and their families.

I have volunteered with several nonprofit organizations that deliver advocacy services to persons experiencing serious mental illnesses. I am currently partnering with health, allied health, social science academics and a network of community agencies to design research questions that will produce information to help address community-based outcomes associated with serious mental illnesses like, homelessness.

Marvin Ross is a medical journalist/publisher and has a son with schizophrenia. He lives in Ontario and co-authors a blog on mental illness with a psychiatrist. He has written himself and published for other authors, a number of books on schizophrenia.

Dr. John Gray lives in Victoria, BC and has worked in the mental illness systems of Saskatchewan and British Columbia for over 30 years. He is the lead author of Canadian Mental Health Law and Policy.

Denis Riordan lives in Halifax and is a retired professor of Mathematics and Computer Science. He has been an inspired advocate for mental health and education programs in Ottawa and Halifax since 2017. He won an Inspiration Award from The Royal Hospital in Ottawa in 2019. He is currently a member of NSMoms, an advocacy group for caregivers of loved ones with serious mental illness.

Susanna lives in Ontario and is a mother of two adult children with serious mental illnesses. She has become involved in mental illness advocacy over the past decade. She is especially interested in how privacy laws inhibit family members from being involved in their loved ones’ treatment, thus acting as a barricade to those with mental illnesses becoming as well as possible. She has made it her mission to try to correct this.

Richard Charney is a Toronto-based labour and employment lawyer, an area in which he has practiced for several decades. In recent years he has handled the many issues arising from the mental illness of a family member, both medical and legal. As a lawyer he is sensitive to the need for family members to be able to advance the needs of an ill relative, which is to the benefit of everybody, including the broader community, while constructively reconciling this with individual liberties in a balanced and practical way.

Eva Sultan is a Montreal real estate broker and former social worker. She cares for a loved one with a co-occurring mental health/substance abuse disorder. She sits on various committees at the Douglas Hospital, the Institut de Santé Mentale de Montreal, and CAMH to share her lived experience to advance mental health research.