David Baxter PhD
Late Founder
[URL="http://www.anchormag.com/e107_plugins/content/content.php?]Learning to accept mental illness in today’s society[/url]
By Melissa Churly, Anchor Magazine
Life is good for Keith Anderson, but it wasn’t always that way.
Anderson says he went through “pure hell” to get to where he is today, and that hell was depression. “I had symptoms for many years, but I just thought they were bad days and bad moments and bad weeks. That was just how my life was, I thought.”
The Sydney, Nova Scotia native was a successful lawyer with a beautiful lakefront house when his world came crashing down. The sleepless nights, lack of focus, thoughts of suicide, and the tears that streamed down his face day and night as he drove home from his stressful job lasted for years. “I just didn’t think I was sick.”
It wasn’t until he received a complaint from the Nova Scotia Barristers’ Society that Anderson finally got the help he needed.
“A person involved in that situation looked at my history with the Bar Society and my clean record for 18 years and said, ‘What happened to you?’ I think he understood my situation better than I did at the time.”
Anderson went to see his family physician in March 2003, just days after meeting with the Barristers’ Society, and was diagnosed with depression. A few days later he was suspended from the practice of law. But he says the Society was very supportive.
“The chairman of the Bar Committee said to me, ‘All we want is for you to go home and get healthy.’ They recognized that my depression had led to my bad decision making, and that mental illness is a problem out there for lawyers and many others in the working world.”
Anderson’s depression affected every aspect of his life, including his family, his relationships, his self-confi dence, and his self-worth. But on top of all the symptoms of depression, Anderson also became the victim of stigmatization from former colleagues, friends, and even neighbors.
“It’s amazing the people who stand by you, and it’s amazing the people who don’t,” he says.
At a time in his life when he was looking for support and acceptance, Anderson faced rejection and isolation from many people.
Every time someone he knew walked by him without saying hello or sharing an embrace, it sent him further into depression.
“It was really troubling, and at the time I was pretty shaky, so when someone snubbed me it threw me for a week. It hurts when you think, ‘Gee, they were people who had had their own troubles personally and professionally who I had helped, and the one time I’m in a situation, they’re long gone.’”
Anderson’s experience is not unique. Thousands of people across North America who suffer from depression also become the victims of stigma and discrimination from those around them.
David Goldbloom, MD, the senior medical advisor at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH) in Toronto, Ontario, says there is a double burden for those suffering from depression.
“The double burden is not only the symptoms of depression, but also the shame, the stigma, the sense of personal failure, and even the social isolation that can come forth once depression manifests itself,” Goldbloom says. “At a time when people are feeling low about themselves, very often the reaction from other people is to withdraw. So instead of getting more support, they get less; instead of getting more understanding, they get more judgements about themselves and what they have done wrong [and] who they are as people.”
Still misunderstood
Depression is very different from other illnesses. Unlike a cast for a broken leg—where, aside from the cast, nothing has changed—Goldbloom says when your mind is broken by depression, in the eyes of other people and to some extent in your own eyes, you are no longer you.
Diana Morales, vice president of public education at Mental Health America, a non-profi t organization dedicated to helping people live mentally healthy lives, says there are still many people out there who don’t believe that depression is a serious illness.
“Even though depression is a biologically based medical illness, many still believe that it isn’t serious and that it’s just part of the ups and downs of everyday life,” Morales says. “Some people believe that they should be able to take care of depression themselves and perhaps it’s just a personal weakness rather than an actual health problem.”
Morales says the media is partly to blame for perpetuating many of the stigmas against people with mental illness in our society today. “The images that people see and the stereotypes that are presented leave people with inaccurate and unfair perceptions. For example, the idea that people with mental illness are more prone to violence is certainly untrue. We know that people with mental illnesses are more likely to be the victims of violence rather than the perpetrators of violence.”
Yet headlines with words like “psycho” and “crazy” can still be found in newspapers and on television today, she adds.
The fact that many people feel uncomfortable with depression is what likely keeps others away, says Remi Quirion, PhD, scientific director of the Institute of Neurosciences, Mental Health and Addiction, and psychiatry professor at McGill University in Montreal, Quebec.
“There are a lot of unknowns about mental illness and depression, and so we feel uncomfortable as a society and there is a tendency to exclude or stay away from things that we don’t understand or that we don’t like.”
Quirion says there is still the belief that if you stay too close to a person suffering from mental illness, you are at risk of developing the same type of behavior.
“Of course this is completely false, but it is still there in our society.”
Stephen Schlesinger, PhD, a member of the American Psychological Association and professor at Northwestern University Medical School in Chicago, Illinois, says people are more likely to blame the depressed person for their illness.
“People look at mental health issues as more refl ective of the individual or the moral fi ber of the individual,” Schlesinger says.
“Any type of mental health matter is perceived to be a willful act on the part of the person. So if only the person were to decide to do something else, then they would be okay.”
As a result of this type of thinking, Schlesinger says, there is often punishment rather than help for people with depression.
“People are shunned, they are looked at differently, they’re thought to be differently capable or differently reliable, perhaps as friends or employees or even as partners.”
Surprising stigma
Although stigmatization and discrimination against people with mental health issues come from many different aspects of society, Phil Upshall, the national executive director of the Mood Disorders Society of Canada, says one of the areas where he most often sees discrimination is within the health care field.
“Health care providers are not taught properly about mental illnesses, particularly depression,” he says.
“The media is partly to blame for perpetuating many of the stigmas against people with mental illness in our society today...We know that people with mental illnesses are more likely to be the victims of violence rather than the perpetrators of violence.”
“They are not welcoming to new patients who have mental illness, and emergency wards regularly turn people away principally by letting them wait so long that they leave.”
Sandy Paluzzi says the issue with doctors was a problem for her when she was suffering from depression. The Baltimore, Maryland resident went to see a physician when she had a cold that wouldn’t go away, but when she told the doctor about her symptoms, he dismissed them as symptoms of her depression.
“I’m borderline anemic, so I wanted a blood test to see if my counts were down as a result of the cold, but the doctor said, ‘I think we would just be wasting our time with a blood test.’ I had to go out and find another doctor who would work with my physical symptoms and not blame everything on the depression. It was frustrating.”
Stigma and discrimination against people with depression create many challenges. It can affect one’s ability to get proper health care, to find and maintain a job, to get support from the community, maintain housing, obtain insurance, and even to recover. “The cost of stigma is really huge for people who suffer from depression, because they are already in a place where they feel worthless, hopeless, and helpless,” says Sarah Hamid-Balma, the director of public education and communications for the Canadian Mental Health Association–British Columbia Division. “They have a lot of guilt and anxiety and a lot of bad feelings about themselves.
The stigma ends up confirming all of the negative things they were thinking. It causes a lot of doubt in one’s abilities and in one’s resilience. It certainly doesn’t help with overall recovery and often feeds the depression even more.” The stigma of depression can often keep people from seeking the help they need. According to the Mood Disorders Society of Canada, only about one-third of those with depression actually seek help.
“They might have seen how someone reacted to a coworker or family member when they came out about their depression, and when it happens to them they say, 'Well, I don’t want to be treated like that, so I won’t disclose and I won’t get help,” says Hamid-Balma. As a result of so many people not seeking treatment for their depression, there is an enormous effect on the economies of both Canada and the United States.
“It is estimated that economic losses in Canada in terms of lost productivity ranges between $30 and $35 billion a year,” says Quirion. “If you go many months or even years without seeking help, then you would probably have trouble performing at work. That’s why it is so important to fi nd ways to reduce stigma so that people will seek help sooner rather than later when they have a crisis or need to be hospitalized.”
Progress is happening
Despite the problems with stigma in North America today, things are not as bad as they were 20 years ago, says Quirion. “It’s a lot easier to talk about depression today. Society is more open to consider and try to understand people who suffer.” He says workplaces are becoming more and more sensitized to the problems of mental health, especially in larger companies where there are programs that encourage employees to talk about depression and provide ways to help, including counseling and computer-based assessments.
But, he says, it’s important to make sure that these programs are available and accessible to everyone.
“We need to share more information. If there is a good program, we need to make sure that we can share the expertise and share the data so that we can try to build up even better programs.”
Quirion says that mental illnesses are still treated differently from other illness by the government at all levels. In order to reduce discrimination, “we need the government to talk about mental illness as just another type of disease.”
In comparison to other countries, neither Canada nor the United States rank high in terms of dealing with the stigma of mental illness, adds Quirion.
“Australia, Great Britain, and the Scandinavian countries like Sweden and Finland have been making a lot of progress and have a lot of programs in place at various levels, so we have a lot of room for improvement.”
Morales agrees that things are defi nitely improving, but there is still a long way to go: “There have been a lot of efforts around depression here in the U.S. over the years. One of the very hopeful signs we see is that Americans’ views towards depression are improving. We started a survey in 1996 and found that only about 38 percent of people viewed depression as a real health problem.
When we finished the survey in 2006, 72 percent of people viewed depression as a real health problem. That’s a signifi cant improvement in perception over 10 years, but we want that number to get to 100 percent.”
Morales credits this change in attitude to better public education. “National and local organizations have been working hard to disseminate the science of depression and the message that it is a biologically based illness,” she says, adding there needs to be more routine screening in primary care to diagnose depression.
“Just like you would get your cholesterol or blood pressure taken, we should be screening for depression. It’s just so commonplace and so many people are affected by it.” Goldbloom says one of the programs that CAMH implemented was based on the fact that mental health problems are so commonplace. The Transforming Lives campaign featured large photographs of both ordinary and extraordinary Canadians talking about their personal struggles with mental illness. “At the emergency room at CAMH, we have seen an increase in visits prompted by people who saw the posters and decided it was time to get help,” he says.
And according to Goldbloom, there are three ways to confront stigma and discrimination: protest, education, and human contact. “There is some evidence that human contact is really the most potent, he says. “If you tell people the right things to say, they will say the right things, but that doesn’t necessarily change how they think. But when you detoxify or defang the threat of these illnesses by meeting people who have experienced them, recovered from them, and put a human face on the experience, then it becomes less of a monster.”
He says there has been progress made in the fi ght to reduce stigma and it’s refl ected in a number of different ways. “First of all, I find myself doing a great deal of public education—speaking at all kinds of venues where 10 years ago we wouldn’t be talking about this. Recently I spoke to frontline oil and gas pipe fitters about mental illness in the workplace, in schools, in banks, in government offices, and with groups of human resources professionals.”
And the interest in knowing more about mental illness doesn’t stop at individuals and businesses. Goldbloom says there is also renewed interest from governments.
“All of the parties now regularly pay some attention to the needs of people with mental illness in their political platforms,” he says. Mental health issues have even been among topics discussed by candidates of the U.S. Presidential elections.
Speaking up for change
Although more people are realizing the signifi cance of mental health issues on society, Goldbloom stresses this does not immediately translate into “a fabulous new experience for people with mental illnesses.”
“The illnesses are no different and the degree of acceptance is better, but it’s nowhere close to where it should be.”
Stella March practices protest as a way to combat stigma and discrimination. As the national coordinator of NAMI (National Alliance on Mental Illness) StigmaBusters, a network of advocates across the United States and worldwide who fi ght inaccurate representation of mental illness, March looks for stigmatizing advertisements, films, commercials, and other issues in the media and posts them online for others to view.
“I will get a tip from someone through email and when I investigate and find out [that] it’s true, I try to contact the person or organization that is doing the stigmatizing and get them to take it down.”
Her efforts have been successful; there was a Sprint cell phone commercial that showed mentally ill patients going to the nurse for their medication and instead of getting pills they get cell phones. After about two weeks of talking to the company, the commercials were taken off the air.
March believes that the many celebrities like well-known 60 Minutes correspondent Mike Wallace, who have talked openly about their experiences with mental illness, as well as movies and shows on television that have more accurate portrayals of people with mental illness, are all paving the way for a better understanding. Meanwhile, Schlesinger thinks the key to reducing stigma is to educate the public about new research and treatments for depression.
“We now have better treatment options and know more about what works best so we can offer a better chance at recovery, and we need to get this understanding out to the public.”
And the newly created Mental Health Commission of Canada, a national body funded by the federal government, with its 10-year plan to reduce the stigma of mental illness, is very encouraging says Hamid-Balma.
“We know that stigmas can be reduced; we have seen it with breast cancer. And we know that stigmas can be created; we have seen it with drunk driving and with smoking. These things can change in a generation, and that’s very important for people to know.”
According to Upshall, things are only on the brink of changing in Canada. “We finally have a wee bit of leadership from the government, and we’ve got the business leaders paying attention, so money is starting to fl ow into mental health issues. But these things need to continue, along with more research, before anything can start to change.”
Upshall says the way to reduce stigma is to teach the public by example. “You can’t tell somebody to change their habits—you have got to show them.” That’s exactly what Anderson is doing. He has written articles for local and national newspapers about his experience with depression, and plans to continue sharing his story with anyone who will listen.
“I have always wanted to have a voice, mostly for my own benefit,” he says. “I want to explain what happened to me for me. With depression, you don’t think of yourself. I was so good to so many people and I did nothing for myself. Now that’s what I’m doing.” He also hopes that by telling his story, it will help take away some of the stigma that others feel.
“If they hear me or read my story and it makes it better, then that’s wonderful. Each day since I was diagnosed has been a better day. I’m getting healthy again and that was my goal. I did it.”
Melissa Churly is a freelance print journalist and recent graduate of Ryerson University. She is based in Mississauga, Ontario.
By Melissa Churly, Anchor Magazine
Life is good for Keith Anderson, but it wasn’t always that way.
Anderson says he went through “pure hell” to get to where he is today, and that hell was depression. “I had symptoms for many years, but I just thought they were bad days and bad moments and bad weeks. That was just how my life was, I thought.”
The Sydney, Nova Scotia native was a successful lawyer with a beautiful lakefront house when his world came crashing down. The sleepless nights, lack of focus, thoughts of suicide, and the tears that streamed down his face day and night as he drove home from his stressful job lasted for years. “I just didn’t think I was sick.”
It wasn’t until he received a complaint from the Nova Scotia Barristers’ Society that Anderson finally got the help he needed.
“A person involved in that situation looked at my history with the Bar Society and my clean record for 18 years and said, ‘What happened to you?’ I think he understood my situation better than I did at the time.”
Anderson went to see his family physician in March 2003, just days after meeting with the Barristers’ Society, and was diagnosed with depression. A few days later he was suspended from the practice of law. But he says the Society was very supportive.
“The chairman of the Bar Committee said to me, ‘All we want is for you to go home and get healthy.’ They recognized that my depression had led to my bad decision making, and that mental illness is a problem out there for lawyers and many others in the working world.”
Anderson’s depression affected every aspect of his life, including his family, his relationships, his self-confi dence, and his self-worth. But on top of all the symptoms of depression, Anderson also became the victim of stigmatization from former colleagues, friends, and even neighbors.
“It’s amazing the people who stand by you, and it’s amazing the people who don’t,” he says.
At a time in his life when he was looking for support and acceptance, Anderson faced rejection and isolation from many people.
Every time someone he knew walked by him without saying hello or sharing an embrace, it sent him further into depression.
“It was really troubling, and at the time I was pretty shaky, so when someone snubbed me it threw me for a week. It hurts when you think, ‘Gee, they were people who had had their own troubles personally and professionally who I had helped, and the one time I’m in a situation, they’re long gone.’”
Anderson’s experience is not unique. Thousands of people across North America who suffer from depression also become the victims of stigma and discrimination from those around them.
David Goldbloom, MD, the senior medical advisor at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH) in Toronto, Ontario, says there is a double burden for those suffering from depression.
“The double burden is not only the symptoms of depression, but also the shame, the stigma, the sense of personal failure, and even the social isolation that can come forth once depression manifests itself,” Goldbloom says. “At a time when people are feeling low about themselves, very often the reaction from other people is to withdraw. So instead of getting more support, they get less; instead of getting more understanding, they get more judgements about themselves and what they have done wrong [and] who they are as people.”
Still misunderstood
Depression is very different from other illnesses. Unlike a cast for a broken leg—where, aside from the cast, nothing has changed—Goldbloom says when your mind is broken by depression, in the eyes of other people and to some extent in your own eyes, you are no longer you.
Diana Morales, vice president of public education at Mental Health America, a non-profi t organization dedicated to helping people live mentally healthy lives, says there are still many people out there who don’t believe that depression is a serious illness.
“Even though depression is a biologically based medical illness, many still believe that it isn’t serious and that it’s just part of the ups and downs of everyday life,” Morales says. “Some people believe that they should be able to take care of depression themselves and perhaps it’s just a personal weakness rather than an actual health problem.”
Morales says the media is partly to blame for perpetuating many of the stigmas against people with mental illness in our society today. “The images that people see and the stereotypes that are presented leave people with inaccurate and unfair perceptions. For example, the idea that people with mental illness are more prone to violence is certainly untrue. We know that people with mental illnesses are more likely to be the victims of violence rather than the perpetrators of violence.”
Yet headlines with words like “psycho” and “crazy” can still be found in newspapers and on television today, she adds.
The fact that many people feel uncomfortable with depression is what likely keeps others away, says Remi Quirion, PhD, scientific director of the Institute of Neurosciences, Mental Health and Addiction, and psychiatry professor at McGill University in Montreal, Quebec.
“There are a lot of unknowns about mental illness and depression, and so we feel uncomfortable as a society and there is a tendency to exclude or stay away from things that we don’t understand or that we don’t like.”
Quirion says there is still the belief that if you stay too close to a person suffering from mental illness, you are at risk of developing the same type of behavior.
“Of course this is completely false, but it is still there in our society.”
Stephen Schlesinger, PhD, a member of the American Psychological Association and professor at Northwestern University Medical School in Chicago, Illinois, says people are more likely to blame the depressed person for their illness.
“People look at mental health issues as more refl ective of the individual or the moral fi ber of the individual,” Schlesinger says.
“Any type of mental health matter is perceived to be a willful act on the part of the person. So if only the person were to decide to do something else, then they would be okay.”
As a result of this type of thinking, Schlesinger says, there is often punishment rather than help for people with depression.
“People are shunned, they are looked at differently, they’re thought to be differently capable or differently reliable, perhaps as friends or employees or even as partners.”
Surprising stigma
Although stigmatization and discrimination against people with mental health issues come from many different aspects of society, Phil Upshall, the national executive director of the Mood Disorders Society of Canada, says one of the areas where he most often sees discrimination is within the health care field.
“Health care providers are not taught properly about mental illnesses, particularly depression,” he says.
“The media is partly to blame for perpetuating many of the stigmas against people with mental illness in our society today...We know that people with mental illnesses are more likely to be the victims of violence rather than the perpetrators of violence.”
“They are not welcoming to new patients who have mental illness, and emergency wards regularly turn people away principally by letting them wait so long that they leave.”
Sandy Paluzzi says the issue with doctors was a problem for her when she was suffering from depression. The Baltimore, Maryland resident went to see a physician when she had a cold that wouldn’t go away, but when she told the doctor about her symptoms, he dismissed them as symptoms of her depression.
“I’m borderline anemic, so I wanted a blood test to see if my counts were down as a result of the cold, but the doctor said, ‘I think we would just be wasting our time with a blood test.’ I had to go out and find another doctor who would work with my physical symptoms and not blame everything on the depression. It was frustrating.”
Stigma and discrimination against people with depression create many challenges. It can affect one’s ability to get proper health care, to find and maintain a job, to get support from the community, maintain housing, obtain insurance, and even to recover. “The cost of stigma is really huge for people who suffer from depression, because they are already in a place where they feel worthless, hopeless, and helpless,” says Sarah Hamid-Balma, the director of public education and communications for the Canadian Mental Health Association–British Columbia Division. “They have a lot of guilt and anxiety and a lot of bad feelings about themselves.
The stigma ends up confirming all of the negative things they were thinking. It causes a lot of doubt in one’s abilities and in one’s resilience. It certainly doesn’t help with overall recovery and often feeds the depression even more.” The stigma of depression can often keep people from seeking the help they need. According to the Mood Disorders Society of Canada, only about one-third of those with depression actually seek help.
“They might have seen how someone reacted to a coworker or family member when they came out about their depression, and when it happens to them they say, 'Well, I don’t want to be treated like that, so I won’t disclose and I won’t get help,” says Hamid-Balma. As a result of so many people not seeking treatment for their depression, there is an enormous effect on the economies of both Canada and the United States.
“It is estimated that economic losses in Canada in terms of lost productivity ranges between $30 and $35 billion a year,” says Quirion. “If you go many months or even years without seeking help, then you would probably have trouble performing at work. That’s why it is so important to fi nd ways to reduce stigma so that people will seek help sooner rather than later when they have a crisis or need to be hospitalized.”
Progress is happening
Despite the problems with stigma in North America today, things are not as bad as they were 20 years ago, says Quirion. “It’s a lot easier to talk about depression today. Society is more open to consider and try to understand people who suffer.” He says workplaces are becoming more and more sensitized to the problems of mental health, especially in larger companies where there are programs that encourage employees to talk about depression and provide ways to help, including counseling and computer-based assessments.
But, he says, it’s important to make sure that these programs are available and accessible to everyone.
“We need to share more information. If there is a good program, we need to make sure that we can share the expertise and share the data so that we can try to build up even better programs.”
Quirion says that mental illnesses are still treated differently from other illness by the government at all levels. In order to reduce discrimination, “we need the government to talk about mental illness as just another type of disease.”
In comparison to other countries, neither Canada nor the United States rank high in terms of dealing with the stigma of mental illness, adds Quirion.
“Australia, Great Britain, and the Scandinavian countries like Sweden and Finland have been making a lot of progress and have a lot of programs in place at various levels, so we have a lot of room for improvement.”
Morales agrees that things are defi nitely improving, but there is still a long way to go: “There have been a lot of efforts around depression here in the U.S. over the years. One of the very hopeful signs we see is that Americans’ views towards depression are improving. We started a survey in 1996 and found that only about 38 percent of people viewed depression as a real health problem.
When we finished the survey in 2006, 72 percent of people viewed depression as a real health problem. That’s a signifi cant improvement in perception over 10 years, but we want that number to get to 100 percent.”
Morales credits this change in attitude to better public education. “National and local organizations have been working hard to disseminate the science of depression and the message that it is a biologically based illness,” she says, adding there needs to be more routine screening in primary care to diagnose depression.
“Just like you would get your cholesterol or blood pressure taken, we should be screening for depression. It’s just so commonplace and so many people are affected by it.” Goldbloom says one of the programs that CAMH implemented was based on the fact that mental health problems are so commonplace. The Transforming Lives campaign featured large photographs of both ordinary and extraordinary Canadians talking about their personal struggles with mental illness. “At the emergency room at CAMH, we have seen an increase in visits prompted by people who saw the posters and decided it was time to get help,” he says.
And according to Goldbloom, there are three ways to confront stigma and discrimination: protest, education, and human contact. “There is some evidence that human contact is really the most potent, he says. “If you tell people the right things to say, they will say the right things, but that doesn’t necessarily change how they think. But when you detoxify or defang the threat of these illnesses by meeting people who have experienced them, recovered from them, and put a human face on the experience, then it becomes less of a monster.”
He says there has been progress made in the fi ght to reduce stigma and it’s refl ected in a number of different ways. “First of all, I find myself doing a great deal of public education—speaking at all kinds of venues where 10 years ago we wouldn’t be talking about this. Recently I spoke to frontline oil and gas pipe fitters about mental illness in the workplace, in schools, in banks, in government offices, and with groups of human resources professionals.”
And the interest in knowing more about mental illness doesn’t stop at individuals and businesses. Goldbloom says there is also renewed interest from governments.
“All of the parties now regularly pay some attention to the needs of people with mental illness in their political platforms,” he says. Mental health issues have even been among topics discussed by candidates of the U.S. Presidential elections.
Speaking up for change
Although more people are realizing the signifi cance of mental health issues on society, Goldbloom stresses this does not immediately translate into “a fabulous new experience for people with mental illnesses.”
“The illnesses are no different and the degree of acceptance is better, but it’s nowhere close to where it should be.”
Stella March practices protest as a way to combat stigma and discrimination. As the national coordinator of NAMI (National Alliance on Mental Illness) StigmaBusters, a network of advocates across the United States and worldwide who fi ght inaccurate representation of mental illness, March looks for stigmatizing advertisements, films, commercials, and other issues in the media and posts them online for others to view.
“I will get a tip from someone through email and when I investigate and find out [that] it’s true, I try to contact the person or organization that is doing the stigmatizing and get them to take it down.”
Her efforts have been successful; there was a Sprint cell phone commercial that showed mentally ill patients going to the nurse for their medication and instead of getting pills they get cell phones. After about two weeks of talking to the company, the commercials were taken off the air.
March believes that the many celebrities like well-known 60 Minutes correspondent Mike Wallace, who have talked openly about their experiences with mental illness, as well as movies and shows on television that have more accurate portrayals of people with mental illness, are all paving the way for a better understanding. Meanwhile, Schlesinger thinks the key to reducing stigma is to educate the public about new research and treatments for depression.
“We now have better treatment options and know more about what works best so we can offer a better chance at recovery, and we need to get this understanding out to the public.”
And the newly created Mental Health Commission of Canada, a national body funded by the federal government, with its 10-year plan to reduce the stigma of mental illness, is very encouraging says Hamid-Balma.
“We know that stigmas can be reduced; we have seen it with breast cancer. And we know that stigmas can be created; we have seen it with drunk driving and with smoking. These things can change in a generation, and that’s very important for people to know.”
According to Upshall, things are only on the brink of changing in Canada. “We finally have a wee bit of leadership from the government, and we’ve got the business leaders paying attention, so money is starting to fl ow into mental health issues. But these things need to continue, along with more research, before anything can start to change.”
Upshall says the way to reduce stigma is to teach the public by example. “You can’t tell somebody to change their habits—you have got to show them.” That’s exactly what Anderson is doing. He has written articles for local and national newspapers about his experience with depression, and plans to continue sharing his story with anyone who will listen.
“I have always wanted to have a voice, mostly for my own benefit,” he says. “I want to explain what happened to me for me. With depression, you don’t think of yourself. I was so good to so many people and I did nothing for myself. Now that’s what I’m doing.” He also hopes that by telling his story, it will help take away some of the stigma that others feel.
“If they hear me or read my story and it makes it better, then that’s wonderful. Each day since I was diagnosed has been a better day. I’m getting healthy again and that was my goal. I did it.”
Melissa Churly is a freelance print journalist and recent graduate of Ryerson University. She is based in Mississauga, Ontario.
