I became a passionate advocate for mental health in 2008,
when my best friend killed herself. I channeled all of my hurt and grief into a
personal crusade to do whatever I could to attack the stigma that had kept her
silent. I became a Champion for the Mentally Ill.
Because Megan lost her
battle with depression, I saw her as one of them: the Mentally Ill. Even though
I was reeling, desperately sad and confused, drowning in my own shock and anger, I didn’t identify what was happening to me as my own mental health
challenge – I was fine, I was coping. Because this is how I – and the rest of the world
– understood Mental Illness: as a binary thing. You either have it, or you
don’t. I didn’t have it. She did, and it cost her her life. So I buried my
sorrow and channeled it into a personal crusade to save the Mentally Ill.
The Old Model:
source: Mental Health Commission of Canada, "The Working Mind"
As the years passed, I kept working, living a busy life with
lots of commitments. I organized a national conference, with a keynote panel
discussion on mental health. I told Megan’s story to anyone who would listen. My message: don’t be afraid to ask for help. Suicide is devastating to all those left
behind. Above all, we have an obligation to have compassion for the Mentally Ill. I reached out to
colleagues who were struggling, offering an ear and supporting them as best I
could as they tried to navigate a workplace culture that also embraced this
simplistic binary notion of mental illness.
But as campaigns like Bell Let’s Talk and Do It For Daron
began to shift the momentum in the public conversation, we started talking
about Mental Health rather than focusing on Mental Illness. Champions like
Clara Hughes showed us, by telling their personal stories, that we all share
experiences that challenge our mental health. We began to collectively accept
the fact that we had to let go of the stigma around mental illness and begin to
look at it differently. The efforts of the Mental Health Commission of Canada, supported by an infusion of corporate dollars and a growing public will to
do this important work, began to coalesce, and I
believe we are already saving lives as a result.
This year, my passion for mental health advocacy happily collided
with the awakening of my employer, the Government of Canada to The Cause I embraced all those years ago. The FederalPublic Service Mental Health Strategy is built around meeting three basic goals:
1) changing the culture, 2) building a common understanding (through training),
and 3) using an evidence-based approach (i.e. using real measures to both
identify the issues, and articulate clear goals against which progress can be
measured). That reframes all kinds of conversations, ranging from
organizational culture change, to internal communications and engagement,
performance management, and human resources.
The Mental Health Continuum: a Transformational Concept
I have trained over three decades to respond to imperatives
like this. I have learned that, to begin to change culture, you start by
changing the conversation. Drawing from my knowledge and experience as a change
agent, and as a well-seasoned communications and PR specialist, I believe that
the key lies in finding a transformational concept around which to begin to
reframe the conversation.
And The Mental Health Continuum is where we can start to do
that.
In the old was of thinking, mental health was seen as a binary thing –
we were either “well” or “ill”. Even leaving aside for a moment the fact that
we had absolutely no skills in how to interact with the Mentally Ill, the
fundamental flaw in the model is that is sets up a Them and Us relationship
between those in crisis and those who need to respond to it. Any conversation –
whether it is about performance, or concern for the employee’s wellbeing –
starts from the premise that if you’re not “healthy”, you’re “ill”.
Enter the new model:
source: Mental Health Commission of Canada, "The Working Mind"
In the new Mental Health Continuum, I found my “a-ha” moment as a
change agent – and in my own mental health. By recognizing that we all live in
flux, somewhere along a Continuum across which we move between the two extremes
of “healthy” and “ill”, we change the
conversation from one based on a dynamic of Them (the “ill”) and Us (the
“healthy”), to one based on WE.
This is the place where I live. All of my PR skills, and my
lived experience, are coming to roost here in this, my new purpose. I will do
everything in my power to help this Movement succeed. As it applies to my work in The Service, we are on a mission to make our workplace a kinder, gentler, and yes, more
productive place, where people share a sense of community and a connection to
our common purpose of Public Service.
We all live on the Continuum.
Most of us – we hope – live on the healthy side. But life is
tough. Sometimes it’s brutal. We have experiences that change who we are. We
all experience great sadness, crises of confidence, horrific tragedy. The key
to embracing this new construct and realizing its power, is to recognize that we all have a role to
play in our collective Mental Health story. At work, and in our personal relationships,
we have an obligation to do what we can to create a safer place in which people
can go through their “reacting” and “injured”, and come back to “healthy” -- just
as we have a responsibility to provide first aid when someone is physically
hurt, and support each other in times of crisis. And we have an invitation to embrace our own Mental Health story.
It translates beautifully in a corporate system like The
Public Service, because you can institutionalize all of the required supports to make it work: you can define and measure
success, clearly articulate goals, define roles, and establish ground rules such that you are set
up to succeed. It’s a controllable environment, with levers readily available
to be used positively. For my work, call it Internal Communications, Employee Engagement, whatever
you like, at its core, it’s about changing a conversation.
My First Aid Training has now given me a language and a
lexicon for breaking that down in practical terms, and fully stepping in to my
role as a storyteller. I understand now how I can honour my responsibility as a
member of my work community and as a mental health advocate. The key to the Continuum is in being self-aware, and vigilant in our care of others. It is the intensity and the duration of the time any of us spends in the
“ill” box that makes the difference. Without the tools to cope, without a strategy – without a positive
construct for a conversation about mental health – people have historically been getting
stuck in “injured”. And over time, that becomes “ill”.
But with the Continuum, we can acknowledge that WE all have
those moments. If we all live this story together, we can all find our way to
play a part in creating an environment that is healthy, safe,
and supportive, and ultimately - to apply it to the business context - highly productive.
But wait, there’s
more: Embracing The Continuum -- A Personal Story
My first husband was an undiagnosed manic depressive, and I
was working three jobs to keep us afloat. Man, was that hard. Meanwhile, a dear
friend was dying of cervical cancer, living with her step-dad north of Toronto.
I moved there to be with her, to help care for her, and taught my classes
online, commuting back to Ottawa for the occasional “conjugal” visit. There was
more than one occasion when I entertained the fantasy that a simple flick of
the wrist would end my misery as I flew down the 401. But no, I wasn’t “ill” –
I kept functioning. My friend died, and soon afterwards, my first husband and I
divorced, and I felt “healthy” again.
I subsequently met and married The Man of My Dreams. A
fully-functioning, healthy man with passion, an artist with a very special
voice I believe the world needs to hear. Together, we have built an amazing
life. I fell in love with his daughter, and he and I got matching tattoos to
celebrate the arrival of our first grandchild four years ago. We survived a
full-house renovation, our relationship stronger because of it. We have a deep connection and a healthy, respectful relationship; we show the best of ourselves to each other,
and above else are always honest about how we are feeling.
This spring, my husband of 13 years told me he wasn’t happy
in the marriage, and last week, he declared that he wanted to separate. My
world tilted, and I fell into a big pool of Sadness. I was sad to contemplate
life without him. Very sad. Mind-numbingly sad. Physically hurting sad. I
talked to my manager. I contacted EAP. I saw a therapist. We talked about how I
was coping – quite well, intellectually, I knew what I needed to do to support
my partner. But I cried, I raged at the traffic, I wasn’t sleeping well, and I
began to worry that, fight as I might, I was becoming “ill”.
Even as recently as a few months ago, I still saw Megan as
the emblem of “ill”, and myself as “healthy” – and lived in fear of becoming
like her. Meanwhile, deep down, I knew I wasn’t “healthy” all the time. And that scared me. But I didn’t think about
killing myself. I just procrastinated a bit, maybe. I honoured my
commitments, always – my training is too deeply ingrained, and I was always
able to get the gumption up to pull an all-nighter if need be. I was ALWAYS
there in the crunch – I even became a crisis communications specialist while my
first marriage was breaking down. I wrote a blog about being a “functioning depressive”. I was coping, I thought.
But then, I met The Continuum, and since then, everything has
begun to change. In the moment that I discovered that I am not “ill” – that I
am simply living out a moment on the sad side of the Continuum - I began to
cope better. I realized that I had been carrying my own stigma about those
“ill” moments when they happened. Instead of fearing the blackness, I made
peace with those moments, and took charge of my mental health with the
confidence that I had it within myself to come through this in one piece, with
my humanity and relationships intact. And with the Mental Health Framework, I
have the resources I need to do whatever it takes to do that.
I’m a PR professional and change agent on a mission. But
first and foremost, I am a human being. I now have to acknowledge that my
relationship with my husband is going to become something else. Being sad, and
knowing how important it is for me to allow myself to be emotional in those moments,
I have been crying – a lot. But instead of seeing myself as broken – “ill” – I now
know that I am “reacting” to a jarring change. I may even be dipping into
“injured” now and then – and that’s ok. Sometimes I get a cough. Sometimes my
knee hurts and I can’t walk very well. It’s the same thing. It’s another moment
on a continuum of Wellness.
So, as I embrace my Life On The Continuum, I will use this
journey in my role as a Mental Health Champion. I am committed to sharing my
own personal story, in the hopes that you will see how we all are part of this
evolving conversation about mental health.
So today, here is what’s going on with me. I am beyond
excited about the confluence of my own personal search for meaning in Megan’s
suicide, and this global movement to change the conversation about mental
health. But I am also very, very sad to be separating from my husband. We have
a wonderful relationship, and he is going through his own experience on The
Continuum. His coping strategy is to ask for space, and we are working out how
to do that through good conversation and much love. I believe that part of the
reason I am able to go through this with him with compassion and respect is
because I now recognize where any of my occasional hurtful, resentful thoughts
originate: in a transient moment of “ill”ness. These thoughts are not the true
me – they are just an expression of how I am feeling at a moment in time. So I
don’t say mean things. I don’t lash out in anger. I cry, and I talk – and I
walk through it. We walk through it.
So, as it turns out, I am a poster child for the Power of
the Continuum. I no longer have to see myself as “ill” to acknowledge that I
need to ask for help. I know that right now, as I am “reacting”, I need to take
special care of my mental health, just as I would a torn knee ligament or a
breast cancer scare. I am working with my manager to come up with a plan that
gives me the space I need to do what I need to do first: take care of myself. The
Framework empowers me to ask for that help. And as someone I work with loves to
keep reminding me: just like we’re taught when flying in an airplane, we must
first take care of ourselves before we can be of any use to others.
I will not be defined by the sadness I am feeling. Instead,
I will use this experience to share my story with you about my Life on the
Continuum. I will tell you how I am being accommodated, and how by embracing
the Power of the Continuum, I will, I hope, be a better partner to the man I
love. And, I hope, I will also be a voice for mental health advocacy, and a
force for good in my workplace.
2 comments:
Inspiring
Thought provoking. Rather than a horizontal line, I envision the continuum as a hill that needs to be climbed. And the path is slippery as hell. Climb, slide....climb, slide....
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