Yes, it’s been a while again. I had this fantastic plan to run two blogs at once on here – one mental health, one political. However, the idea isn’t gelling when I see in real life, so I have decided to shelve it for now and just stick with the mental health stuff. I may make a second blog to cover my political thoughts and issues of the time, so there may be a little more back and forth on that front.

However, sometimes the politics and mental health just come together without any effort.

This past weekend was the Liberal Party of Canada’s biennial policy convention. A lot of different things came out of it – an overwhelming vote to support the legalization of pot, a new party president, and two new mental health policies for the party.

The first covers maternal mental health and how the party supports creating a national maternal mental health strategy for the government to deal with funding and supporting the issue across Canada. They particularly highlight the prevalence of the issue in First Nations communities, and how often the partners of someone suffering from postpartum depression may develop depression themselves.

The second policy is regarding a national mental health strategy and how the party wants to see mental health receive more funding (10%, as recommended by the WHO, instead of the current 5.5%), more prominence in national health discussions, and work with First Nation and Inuit communities to address the high level of mental health issues in their communities.

Mind you, that policy is dependent on the party winning the next general election, which isn’t for another 3.5 years.

I think some of these ideas are valid ones – maternal mental health can affect the child(ren) involved, and can actually cause developmental and bonding issues for the child later in life. And I think we all know the effects of menal illness on not just those suffering from it, but from those around them. It’s true – we do need to address it.

However, these policies seem a little vague in how they plan to address the issues. I also feel like the mental health strategy is too reliant on the party getting elected for them to do anything.

It’s a start, and I can’t fault them for that. It’s always a start. The question is, how will they make the policy come to life? How will they follow through? And will they even have the money when the time comes to make these changes?

These questions are perhaps harder for a man to answer than a woman. There is a certain amount of weakness expected in a woman, leading her to stay in a bad situation (why that weakness is expected is another post and discussion altogether). But a man is supposed to be dominant. He’s supposed to hit back when hit, and try to beat the crap out of the man trying to beat him. He’s not supposed to stay to keep getting abused, to be cut up and emaciated.

I feel bad for this man. For a woman, being abused is an embarrassment – we’re warned to not let it happen to us. But him? A man? Abused? It’s just not supposed to happen.

But I also admire this same man who is doing something that is not the social norm. He’s speaking up against being abused – no matter how he ended up there, he was there. And he has every right to feel safe and to recover emotionally and mentally (let alone physically) from what happened. And he’s trying to make sure this doesn’t happen to ANYONE else – male or female. No one deserves that treatment.

The Mental Health Strategy that was released around the time of your election does nothing to address those who are midway through their illness. Often the report uses the word “prevention,” somehow implying that mental illness is a preventable disease (hint: the vast majority of the time, it’s not). It makes a lot of statements of what should be done, but I don’t see any promises of what will be done (We will hire 10% more psychiatrists, we will put another $500 million into mental health, etc.). There’s a lot of mention of the “chronic disease management” – what do you mean by that?

Please – speak about this in plain English. Tell us what you think about mental illness. Tell us what you will do to help. What will you do to make sure those with mental health issues, at any stage, get what they need to be productive.

Thanks,

A mental health advocate

I wondered how much help a life coach could really be, but the help has been invaluable so far. It helped me to make a map, to find the steps to make my way forward.

Anyways, this blog will be undergoing an overhaul soon. I won’t be getting rid of the mental health blog, but I also want to blog about politics, since I find myself ranting to many people who say “I’m not really that big into politics.”

So, I’m going to put it here instead. Well, not in “In Mind” – I’ll make a separate blog on this site for the political stuff, so you will have a choice of what to read.

Next week, I will post my impressions (albeit late) of Alberta’s planned changes to mental health care in the province. Just a hint: I don’t like the term “prevent mental illness.” Sometimes boys, it can’t be prevented.

www.metanoia.org/suicide/

I read it, and there were things in here I wish someone had said to me when I was younger and felt this way. Heck, I wish I could have told myself this when I was younger. But it is worth a read, if you are suicidal, or if you know someone who is. Because knowing someone still gives you a reason to learn about this.

I can’t see any comments on their website, but I could feel my heart breaking for this man as I read this story. Everyday, we hear about women who are sexually assaulted (this phrase covers a WIDE variety of assaults, from a bum pinch to rape) yet we rarely hear about men and their assaults.

Men are raped. Men are victimized, and men have the same thoughts as a woman who goes through a similar situation. And although he does not release his name, he is brave enough to put his story out there to be read by people around the world.

There is a line in the story that, I think, many sexual abuse survivors can identify with:

“I tell them repeatedly that I don’t want to talk about it because it was horrible and I want it to go away. I want to not think about it any more.”

Reading that just made my heart break a little more for this man. I hope he realizes that, despite being a cop and despite working on other sexual assault cases and despite knowing the risks, he didn’t deserve what happened to him. I hope he can find the closure he needs and the healing can begin. And I desperately hope his loved ones and those who care about him help him through this with gentle words and loving care. Because no one should go through this, male or female.

I understand there are things some men don’t want to deal with. They don’t want someone’s ex-boyfriend stalking them, for example. Or they don’t want to deal with something equally out there. But there’s nothing that says a person with depression or bipolar or schizophrenia couldn’t be a loving girlfriend (or boyfriend, because men suffer from these illnesses too!). If they are actively treating their illness, they are just as loving, caring, compassionate individuals who want to share a life with someone who loves them for who they are.

Being mentally ill shouldn’t render us as “untouchables” by those who are looking for the same thing as us. For love and tenderness and caring and a companion through our lives. So this idea of saying “no crazies” (or crazys, as I have seen some men spell it) limits the men and women who use this phrase almost as much as it does those who identify with the phrase. Roughly 1/4 of Canada’s population are known to suffer from mental illness – that’s a good part of the dating pool you are wiling to count out because of a prejudice they have based on some notion they have heard from others or have seen on TV or whatever.

Sorry folks – that rant was weighing on me for the last while. I gotta say – some days, the dating ads out there really *do* make me feel like an untouchable, just because I have depression (nevermind that I am in treatment for it). I hope others out there suffering from other mental illnesses realize they have just as much right to be happy as anyone else out there.

This year, it stands out as a reminder of what is no longer in my life, and the depression that seems to be teetering on the edge of taking over. I often wonder what she would say to me about my life in the 12 years since she died, and I wonder how she would react to what has happened to me.

I may not think of her every day like I used to, but I do keep her in my heart as each year passes. All I can hope is that she is with me in my life as I try to figure it all out again.

However, I do have my eyes opened wide enough to realize that I can’t do this entirely. So I have a very small number of friends with whom I discuss everything I am feeling and all the pain and confusion in my mind. These are people who have proven, time and again, that they are OK with sharing this weight with me for a little while, helping me feel OK with what is happening to me.

When I was a teen, I tried to share my load with my friends at the time. However, they couldn’t handle it, and I can now understand why that was. So instead, I stick to a very small group, and share some of what is going on with each of them.

I think this is one of the important parts of getting through the depressing times, having people who can help you get through the heavy times. Thing is, it’s hard for many people with mental illness to reach out. They understand just how difficult their illness is to bear, and they don’t want anyone else to deal with it.

Don’t close ranks. Don’t hide. It actually makes it worse. Please, find a friend or family member or someone who will help you.

**************************

Also, apparently today is Mental Health Day for Bell customers. They donate money from every text or long distance call to mental health initiatives. I wonder what kind of accounting they will have on this process. As a private corporation, they don’t have to say how this funding breaks down, but it would be good to see how much of what they raised will actually go to good mental health organizations.

My ability to cope has slowed a great deal. Thankfully the medication is still keeping up its end of the bargain, otherwise I seriously wonder how I would cope with my feelings of hurt and loss.

This time of year is also a bit of a trigger, as well. My friend Katharine died in 1999, while we were both 16. So around Feb. 10, I’m always a little more moody. That said, I can tell the difference between that kind of moody and my depression.

The last few weeks have been hard on me. However, I am going to try and pull myself up to functional. As for writing here….I want to write again. I miss it a lot. However, I won’t be pressuring myself for the next little while and just write. Let’s see how that goes.