This is our first guest blog. It comes to you from Pemberton-based writer Cindy Filipenko. Portions of this column first appeared in the Whistler Question newspaper on September 20, 2012.
Heads up: Mental Illness Awareness Week (MIAW) kicked off on October 1 and runs until October 7. The week focuses attention on mental disorders: signs and symptoms, how to get help, stigma, hope and recovery, and the impact of mental illness on lives, families, workplaces and society. MIAW is an education project of the Canadian Alliance on Mental Illness and Mental Health, a national fifteen-member alliance of organizations representing the entire mental health-illness continuum. Depression Anxiety Screening and Education Day across BC is always held on the Thursday of Mental Illness Awareness Week.
Although I’ve written about having a mood disorder in the past, I’m upping my level of disclosure in this column. Why? Because last week I read a description of the work of the Kelty Dennehy Foundation, which defined one of their mandates as reducing stigma around mental illness.
Kelty Dennehy was a young Whistler, BC, resident who lost his battle with depression in 2002. His parents have continued their son’s fight through his namesake foundation that’s raised more than $4.1 million towards the prevention of depression-related suicide in young people.
Even without this tragic consequence, untreated mood disorders can greatly impair someone’s life — having negative consequences not only for the sufferer, but his or her family, friends and co-workers. A lot of the problems arise from the skewed perceptions that seem to be part and parcel of mood disorders. Throw in a tendency to self-medicate through the use of drugs and alcohol and life with mental illness can get very difficult.
Since I was a teenager I have suffered from depression — countered by periods of wildly creative enthusiasm that would degenerate into irritable, irrational anger. Oddly enough it took almost 25 years to be diagnosed as having bipolar disorder. It took another eight years, several medication changes and a brief hospitalization for me to accept that I had to take control of this illness or it would control me. For the most part, taking control means I must be committed to living a healthy life by getting enough sleep, being compliant with my medication and being honest — with myself and others — about my emotional state.
In some ways, having bipolar disorder is a lot like being diabetic. It, like other mood disorders, is something that can be managed with medication, monitoring and maintenance. However, I’ve never seen the perpetrator of a violent crime being described as “possibly diabetic.” And therein lies the problem: the stigma. The more that those of us who aren’t violent criminals or train-wreck pop stars talk about what it’s like to live with a mood disorder, the more the stigma will erode and the more likely people will be to get treatment — the same way they would for any physical, non-stigmatized illness.
Concerned that you’re low mood may be more than a temporary blues? Anxiety keeping you from sleeping? Certain you’re the Second Coming? There’s a way to get your life on track and it begins my accessing community mental health services. Because life gets much easier when you move forward from mental illness to mental health. There are resources in your community and they’re only a click away.
Resources:
Vancouver Coastal Health Mental Health Services
Canadian Mental Health Association
World Federation for Mental Health
~ Cindy Filipenko
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