Let’s all keep the conversation going on mental health
On Tuesday of this week, or Canada Day, Clara Hughes, a six-time Olympic medallist, ends her biking marathon for her Bell Let’s Talk campaign to promote awareness of mental health.
This campaign was inspired, as she says herself, by her own battle with depression. Determined to inspire others suffering from mental illness, she has also sought to convey the message that our mental health is just as important as our physical health.
Her campaign has been brilliantly crafted in concert with how society interconnects: through social media. Her message has spread like wildfire.
Hughes isn’t alone as a role model for mental health. At Acadia University in Wolfville, N.S., a girl with whom I graduated from St. Thomas High School in Pointe-Claire, Cassaundra Henske, is promoting mental-health awareness with just as much passion and drive as Hughes.
Initially, she entered a new environment in Nova Scotia shy and even a bit embarrassed to reveal that she has been struggling with mental illness. But as she met new people, she realized that many students were dealing with the same thing, and that a majority of them were hiding a big part of themselves from the world.
Henske thus created her campaign, Break the Silence, in order to help break the stigma of mental illness. With easy access to students on campus grounds, she creatively thought apparel would be great to help spread the word, and so she created her own T-shirts, saying, “I live with mental illness but it does not define me.”
People like Hughes and Henske are making a big difference in the world. Their drive for change and their willingness to help others is what keeps people from giving up on themselves when they have reached rock bot- tom, or when they feel they don’t have a voice.
We live in a society where staying connected comes naturally to us. We are constantly in the middle of a conversation, whether it be on our phones, online or even face to face; there is a constant state of connectivity. Some may frown on the idea of being wired 24/7; however, these campaigns reflect the new communications reality.
We are all connected in some way, and so mental illness affects us all, one way or another, including myself.
Nevertheless, I am human, just like you, and mental illness does not define me, or anyone else.
So let’s keep the conversation moving. Let’s talk, text, tweet and share our recognition of the importance of this issue.