Our Focus

Our Mission

To develop accessible tools and products to help practice good mental health and wellness throughout one's life as an individual, family member, professional or community member.

Our Vision

To foster a better understanding of mental health and improved mental wellness through all of the life stages at home, school, work, and within the community 

Our Objectives

1. Deconstruct academic mental health and wellness research - extract and simplify the essential principles and information for public consumption.

2. Use narrative and storytelling to educate, change perceptions, attitudes and behaviours, and promote mental health and wellness.

3. Develop SMART (specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and timely) innovative, low-cost, high-impact products/tools that create the conditions for better mental health and wellness at home, school, work, and within the community.

4. Continue to work with mental health professionals to ensure products/tools reflect current mental health knowledge.

5. Connect and collaborate with partner organizations to share knowledge and expand the reach of our efforts to improve mental health and wellness.

6. Operate as a professional charity with sustainable funding.  

 

Our Approach 

Iris the Dragon wants to ensure that people maintain their mental health and wellness. We approach our resource and tool development with 3 guiding principles.

 

Focus on upstream efforts to address mental wellness

Good mental health helps to protect people from the onset of mental health problems and illnesses. It also helps to buffer them from the impact of the stresses and hardships that occur in life. To address the larger population, we shall focus on “upstream efforts” of prevention and mental wellness promotion.

 

Focus tools on “life-stages” and key transitions that create high level of stress

Based on our research there is a need to address mental health as people transition through life stages. Stress is at the root of many mental health conditions; it is important to address the different stressors that come with different stages in our lives. Stressors vary through life and thus require customized information and tools to deal with different transitions, our goal is to grant people those tools.

 

Use narrative to create change

Iris the Dragon has 20 years of experience plus proven mediums and methodologies for reaching people and shaping behaviour. The key to our approach is the use of narrative to change people’s opinions. The effectiveness of this approach can be validated by our 2012 and 2018 empirical studies.