Shine a light for mental health
There was a packed room at the Signal Hill Visitors’ Centre Thursday evening for the Canadian Mental Health Association (CMHA) of Newfoundland and Labrador’s “Launch the Light” kickoff event for Mental Health Week beginning on Monday.
That’s where an unassuming young woman showed the kind of positive effect events such as CMHA’S Mental Health Week can have for people with a mental illness.
Lesley Tucker spoke about how she quit school in Grade 12 after struggling with anxiety and depression, and what she later learned was dyslexia. She was diagnosed at age 19.
Tucker quit school 20 years ago.
“Everything felt cloaked in this heavy darkness back then,” she said. “Even though there was an effort on my family’s behalf to not have a sense of shame around it, it was there.
“This was also the age before social media, and aside from the odd piece I’d heard on CBC, very few conversations about mental illness were reaching me.”
Today, the 36-year-old has finished high school and then some — she has a master’s degree in environmental studies.
Tucker thanks her parents for much of her success because, she said, they were excellent advocates and enrolled her at the Waterford Bridge Road Campus of the College of the North Atlantic, a school for students with a diagnosed mental illness who wanted to finish high school. At that time, current CMHA-NL board president Donna Kavanagh was working as the co-ordinating instructor.
“If Donna heard one of her students say something like, ‘I am bipolar,’ or, ‘I am schizophrenic,’ she would gently say, ‘You are a person with bipolar disorder,’ or depression, etcetera. ‘Why would you define yourself by your illness? You’re so much more than that.’ That was a really important message to me at the time,” said Tucker, who now volunteers with Kavanagh on CMHA-NL’S education committee, where she helps organize the “Changing Minds” workshop.
“At the start of each workshop we talk about the mental health continuum, about how everyone is on the continuum, and where you are on it can shift over time, because none of us is immune from mental illness. And also, that regardless of whether we have a diagnosed illness, we are all capable of experiencing good or poor mental health.”
Tucker said she can certainly see that continuum in her own life.
“After 20 years of being in therapy on and off, I’m just as capable of being knocked sideways by anxiety, of experiencing it in all of its intensity. The difference now is I have had the very good fortune to have met a number of people over the years who have taught me about how fear and panic operate, and they have taught me how to relate to it differently.
“And it is a relationship, one that’s always evolving, and I’m always learning from. … If there’s one thing my experiences with fear and panic have taught me, it’s the importance of community.”
That was especially evident for Tucker one night while she was attending university in Nova Scotia and her roommate was home in Newfoundland for a few days.
Tucker was struggling. She found it difficult being alone at night, and to make matters worse, her phone wasn’t working and her apartment was “somewhat in the middle of nowhere on a highway.”
“I felt very cut off from everyone.”
She logged on to her computer and her old neighbour in Newfoundland popped up on Facebook Messenger.
“She must have sensed I was struggling because she stayed up chatting with me until about 2 o’clock that morning. And that felt like a lifeline to me that night. Not that she was saying anything profound, she just kept me company.”
“Donna is always saying that we never know the impact we can have as one person, and how it is often the little gestures, or just our presence, that can make a big difference. And that has certainly been true for me. But the big things matter, too.”
Tucker points to the tooscarce resources and support for people who are struggling, especially long wait times to see medical professionals.
“I don’t think we can underestimate what an aggravating factor that is for people who need it.”
In spite of the bigger issues that still need attention, Tucker said, the conversations that have “opened right up” thanks largely to events such as CMHA Mental Health Week are encouraging for her.
“Today I do feel this community of people who may even just send a message on social media, and it means that no one is in this alone, we’re all in it together. And there’s a real concerted effort and energy behind this push to see more services and supports in place, and have easier access.”
CMHA Mental Health Week begins Monday, with events taking place throughout next week. For a complete list of events, visit https://cmhanl.ca/mentalhealth-week/.
This year also marks 100 years of the existence of CMHA in Canada, so there is an initiative to get 100 communities across the province on board to celebrate Cmha-organized events. Right now, there are about 60 communities taking part, and CMHA-NL chief executive officer Dan Goodyear is optimistic at least 100 communities will be reached by the end of the year.
“We’re really pleased, but we have to expand in the province. We don’t have an office in Labrador, which is ridiculous,” he said. “We really feel we need to have a presence in Labrador. The needs are there, the issues are there. It’s (a lack of) funding. We are working to explore possibilities and options.”
Meanwhile, Goodyear said the organization’s goal with the upcoming week is, as always, to eradicate the stigma around mental illness.
“We’re getting there, and I think it’s through the conversations that we continue to have.”