“While a highly trained professional, Dr. Joanna Cheek does not cloak and armour herself in the white coat of academic expertise without sharing her own vulnerability. This is a guide we can trust. – Dr. Gabor Mate, MD, Author of The Myth of Normal and In the Realm of the Holy Ghosts
Joanna (Jo) Cheek (she/her), M.D., is a Canadian psychiatrist and award-winning clinical professor of medicine at the University of British Columbia. She is a mental health speaker and advocate, meditation teacher, and psychotherapist trained in numerous styles of therapy. She is the author of the Globe and Mail bestselling book IT’S NOT YOU, IT’S THE WORLD: A Mental Health Survival Guide for Us All (HarperCollins Canada).
Jo co-founded Mind Space, a collective of physicians across British Columbia offering publicly-funded mental health groups to tens of thousands of participants as part of her advocacy to improve mental health equity and access to services. She has specific interests in mental health and wellness education, social psychiatry, collective & community care, systems change & quality improvement, group facilitation, trauma, neurodiversity, and cultural humility, equity, diversity, and inclusivity (CHEDI).
Jo sees mental health struggles as symptoms of the imbalances in our wider systems, hoping to decrease the stigma that is too often misplaced on the individuals who suffer rather than the ailing society around them.
“Dr. Joanna Cheek places our mental troubles in the context of the wider world, and her collective view of mental health helps us understand where our thoughts and fears stem from.” – Matt Haig, Author of The Midnight Library & Reasons to Stay Alive
“Joanna faces the personal and the political, bringing her ‘perky optimist’ self and clinical expertise to a stunning range of problems. Her courage and wisdom shine through!” – Jack Kornfield, PhD, Author of A Wise Heart & Bringing Home the Dharma, and Trudy Goodman, PhD, Founding Teacher of Insight LA
“The real reason emotional suffering is skyrocketing isn’t because we’re flawed or broken—it’s because we’re responding to a deeply unwell world. Dr. Joanna Cheek guides us to see the wider ecology driving our distress—the dis-ease of greed, hatred and delusion that infects our societies. With clarity and care, she invites us to face these truths together, to hold hands, and to begin healing the roots of our collective pain.” – Tara Brach, PhD, Author of Radical Acceptance, Radical Compassion, & True Refuge
“Highlighting the inextricably interconnected nature of our existence and the vast web of causes and conditions behind each of our individual experiences, Dr. Cheek emphasizes the need for greater compassion and mutual understanding to best meet the polycrises impacting us all today.” – Sharon Salzberg, Author of Lovingkindness and Real Life
“A powerful antidote to the current geopolitical climate and uncertain times plaguing all of us.” – Dr. Ramneek Dosanjh, MD, Past President of the Federation of Medical Women of Canada & Doctors of British Columbia
Speaking Topics
1. It’s Not You, It’s the World: Self-Care Needs Collective-Care
This talk explores mental health and well-being from a systems perspective, focusing on how individual distress often reflects broader social and environmental imbalances. We will examine how mental health symptoms can function as signals that point to underlying stressors in our bodies, relationships, communities, and larger global systems.
2. Mental Health Survival Skills
We will define mental health symptoms as adaptive signals that point to underlying stressors in our internal and external environments. We discuss how ongoing systemic stress can overwhelm these “alarm systems,” and how this can lead to distress, denial, or emotional shutdown. We will then focus on developing a range of practical skills – such as mindfulness, nervous system regulation, and working with thoughts, emotions, body sensations, trauma, and interpersonal conflict – to better understand and respond to these signals.
3. An Ecological Understanding of Health
We will explore health and well-being through an ecological systems lens – how balance is maintained across both our internal bodies and the wider social and environmental systems we inhabit. We will describe the principles of interdependence, diversity, and feedback regulation in healthy systems, and how changes in any part of a system can deeply impact the whole.
4. Mental Health 101
We will illustrate how stress affects mental health and how emotional and psychological symptoms can serve as important signals of imbalance. The audience can learn how chronic stress overwhelms the body’s natural ability to regulate itself, contributing to mental health challenges, and how a variety of approaches—including therapy, lifestyle practices, social connection, and meaningful engagement—can support recovery and resilience.
5. Dysregulated: Understanding and Managing Our Messy Moments
Will dive into how stress and dysregulation affect our ability to think clearly, connect with others, and make decisions aligned with our values. We will explore how the brain and nervous system responds under stress, how to recognize signs of dysregulation in themselves and others, and practical strategies for restoring balance. This talk will focus on building self-awareness, developing regulation skills, and fostering supportive relationships that encourage connection, co-regulation, and collective well-being.
5. Evolutionary Psychology: We’ve Evolved to Survive, Not To Be Happy or Calm
This talk will explore the purpose and function of emotions as important signals that help us navigate challenges and meet our needs, rooted in neuroscience and evolutionary theory. We will explore how emotions such as fear, grief, shame, resentment, envy, and low mood can provide valuable information about our experiences and environments.
6. Shame: It’s Not You, It’s Them
We will explore the role of shame as a natural emotional response to perceived rejection and disconnection. The audience will examine how shame differs from guilt, how it influences the ways we hide or protect parts of ourselves, and how social experiences shape our sense of belonging.
7. Health is Political: How Inequities Make Everyone Sick
This talk focused on the connection between human health, social systems, and the broader ecosystems we depend on. We will explore how patterns of domination, division, and indifference to realities of our interdependence can create imbalances across communities and societies, and how inequities in areas such as income, education, and healthcare affect collective well-being.
8. Generative Conflict: The Power of Guilt and Repair
This audience will explore how empathy, accountability, and repair can help heal personal and collective divisions. Dr. Cheek will focus on fostering belonging, strengthening our capacity to engage with challenging social issues, and creating opportunities for growth, healing, and deeper understanding through honest dialogue and shared learning.
9. Weak Ties, Strong Communities: How to Foster Connection in Your Hectic Schedules
We will dive into the powerful impact of social connection on physical and mental health – how social isolation affects well-being and longevity, and how the quality and diversity of our relationships can influence health outcomes.
10. Purpose as Medicine
We will explore the connection between individual well-being, social connection, and collective care. Dr. Cheek will examine research showing how living in alignment with personal values, purpose, and meaningful contribution can improve health and resilience, while isolation and excessive individualism can have harmful effects.
11. We Are Our History: How the Past Hasn’t Passed
This talk illustrates how our personal histories, family experiences, and inherited patterns shape the way we think, feel, and relate to others in the present. The audience will be able to develop awareness of these patterns, recognizing when past adaptations are being activated, and building skills to respond with greater self-compassion, choice, and agency in the present.
12. The Emergence of Hope in Chaotic Times
We will examine how individuals and communities can help restore balance in times of social and systemic instability – illustrating how meaningful change often emerges from periods of disruption, and how personal actions, relationships, and values can contribute to creating healthier, more just systems.
13. Press Writing for Academics and Health Professionals
We will explore different genres of journalism and explore tips on how to conceive, report, structure, write, pitch, and publish articles from a journalism perspective, or write and pitch a non-fiction book proposal, find an agent, and submit to publishers.
Dr. Joanna Cheek in the Media:
Telus Talks weekly podcast hosted by Tamara Taggart
Psychology Today article by Dr. Cheek, “Why Self-Care Isn’t Enough”
BBC Science Focus Instant Genius podcast
The Courageous Life podcast: On the Remedy for a World on Fire