Chris Gilham
Chris Gilham, PhD is a Professor in the Faculty of Education at St Francis Xavier University. Chris has been working in education for over 30 years. For four years, he taught grades 7 to 9 as an English as a Foreign Language teacher in Tokyo, Japan. Across six years, in Ontario and Alberta, he taught grades 3 to 6 as an elementary generalist and as a special education teacher. He then worked for five years as a school-board consultant in Student Services with the Calgary Board of Education. For the past thirteen years he has been working with others to create, implement, and evaluate practical, school-based mental health programming for educators and students. Chris actively supervises both MEd and PhD students and he teaches courses on inclusion, mental health literacy, classroom management, and critical research literacy. Chris loves to mountain bike (with his two girls), cross-country ski, work out in the gym, and tend to his garden. He is certified community coach for mountain biking and cross country skiing and has organized and facilitated various workshops and camps for kids. He has also been teaching Japanese Swordsmanship for 30 years, a little side art he picked up while living in Japan back the late 1990s.
Early in his career at StFX Chris was fortunate to be introduced to Dr. Stan Kutcher and his mental health literacy team. Because of his early work with them he has been able to create and maintain his own ongoing projects related to teacher mental health literacy. He is fortunate to work in this field with wonderful graduate students and other academic professionals across the country. He was also introduced to Moe Green and together, they evaluated boys' specific healthy living programming, known as GuysWork. Chris continues this research work with support from Bridges Counselling. He is a team member of UBCs Wellstream - The Canadian Centre for Innovation in Child & Youth Mental Health & Substance Use and is part of a youth advisory committee for the Canadian Men’s Health Foundation.
Peer-reviewed Journal Publications (since 2023; *indicates student mentorship, lead authorship indicated by first or last position)
Page, D.*, & Gilham, C. (2026). Examining the impact of mental health literacy training on
pre-service and in-service teachers’ mental health literacy. Advances in Mental Health, 1–29.
https://doi-org.libproxy.stfx.ca/10.1080/18387357.2026.2661079
Gilham, C., Lee, D., & Hamilton, B.* (2025). School belonging and boys: A program evaluation of
GuysWork. Journal of Men’s Studies. Online Open Access
https://doi-org.libproxy.stfx.ca/10.1177/10608265251408310
Grady, J.*, Gilham, C., Hamilton, B.* & Fleet, G.* (2025). Youth Voice Scoping Reviews: Alignment
and Recommendations for an Adolescent Male-Specific Healthy Living Program. PHEnex, 15, 3.
https://ojs.acadiau.ca/index.php/phenex/article/view/4608
Molyneux, T., Daly, Z., Richardson, C.G., Amlani, A., Dmytro, D., Trépanier-Bisson, N., Gadermann,
A., Goodyear, T., Gilham, C., Ngieng, N., Sam, J., Moore-Arbour, S., Jenkins, E. (2025).
Addressing Student Substance Use in Canadian Schools: An Exploration of Administrators’
Perspectives. Health Promotion International. 40.
https://doi.org/10.1093/heapro/daaf161
Robinson, C., Gilham, C., Randall, L., Carter, E., Fuller, K., Rogers, S, & Vukosa, C. (2025).
Trauma-informed Practices (TIPs) and Physical Education: A Scoping Literature Review.
European Physical Education Review.
https://doi.org/10.1177/1356336X251370270
Page, D.*, Gilham, C., Hamilton, B., & Vukosa, C.* (2025). Mental health literacy in Nova Scotia's
education system: 15 years after the Evergreen framework. Health Promotion International.
https://doi.org/10.1093/heapro/daaf121
Goodyear, T., Sandhu, M., Pitcher, C., Dmytro, D., Shaffer., Moore-Arbour, S., Gilham, C., Bruno,
T., Gadermann, A., Sam, J., Ngieng, N., Jenkins, E. (2025). Taking Stock of Youth Substance
Use Portrayals: A Critical Content Analysis of Canadian News Media, 2016-2024. Social Science
& Medicine.
https://doi-org.libproxy.stfx.ca/10.1016/j.socscimed.2025.118188
Page, D.*, Gilham, C. & Hill, T. (2024). A survey of educator’s mental health literacy and well-being
in Nova Scotia: Identifying patterns by location, training, and experience. School Mental Health,
16(1), 417-435.
https://doi.org/10.1007/s12310-024-09644-y
Gilham, C., Hill, T. G., Coughlan, E., Page, D.*, Vukosa, C.*, Spridgeon, A.*, Wilkie, P.*, Przewieda,
K.* (2023). Measurement and design in surveys of teachers’ mental health literacy: A scoping
review. Healthy Populations Journal, 3(2), 98-145.
https://doi.org/10.15273/hpj.v3i2.11585
Gilham, C., Green, M., Neville-MacLean, S., Ternoway, H., Bakody, N., Smith, D., & Augusta-Scot,
T. (2023). GuysWork: Results from a gender-transformative healthy relationships program for
adolescent boys. Psychology in the Schools, 60(9), 3372-3388.
http://doi.org/10.1002/pits.22937
