Matthew Rico, RN, CPMHN(C), Psychotherapist

Clinician, Educator, Consultant

Contact: ricom@whatmattrs.com

https://openingminds.org/facilitator/?uid=772

Hello everyone! My name is Matthew Rico, a Nurse, Psychotherapist, and Educator at What MattRs (WhatMattRs.com). Mental health is my passion, my special interest, and I have been working in this field that I love for over 13 years across various roles. This includes working as a psychiatric nurse across 4 different hospitals, quality/accreditation, research, and both developing and delivering education. I've worked with all the range of populations and mental health disorders in many different settings.

My mission is to deliver quality support and education in mental health. This is an important topic that deserves more attention and care than what is currently being provided.

Statistically, about 50% of people will be formally diagnosed with a mental health disorder, but still everyone experiences mental health problems--that's life and the human condition. Let's dive deeper, in Canada, suicide is the 9th leading cause of death, 2nd leading cause of death for Canadians aged 15-34 years old, and the number one leading cause of death for our youth 10-14 years old. About 90% of our healthcare and social service sector feels burnt out, 140,000+ job vacancies in this sector, emergency departments in the last two decades have doubled in mental health visits, 76% of post-secondary students report having mental health problems, with 15% of them contemplating suicide every given year. We have 46-56% of North American marriages result in divorce and don't get me started on how internet / social media/ technology is affecting people's mental health (I will have a course on it though).

Over the last 11 years I have developed and delivered educational content to well over 6000 people across more than 700 classes, courses, and presentations. I've taught clinicians and general members of the public; people with and without mental health experience. My work has led me across Canada, to teach at different Indigenous communities, speak as a keynote speaker at various conferences and charity events. I have also been involved in the development of multiple microcredential courses at Ontario Shores Centre for Mental Health Sciences in collaboration with Ontario Tech University. The microcredential topics include: self-care and resilience, Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT), and Motivational Interviewing (MI). Twice a year I teach on culture and mental health for nurses preparing to take the exam for the Canadian Nurses Association (CNA) specialty certification in Psychiatric and Mental Health Nursing.

I bring a diversified experience in mental health, significant experience in education, knowledge in psychotherapy and neuroscience, and lived experience. With an understanding of learning principles from theory and practice, I bring my content to life using storytelling, effective communication, metaphors, analogies, real-life examples, and I connect it all together. This is because knowledge is just information without integration.