Policy Students Share Their Mental Health Stories

With Mental Health Awareness Week kicking off, reducing stigma and ensuring universal mental health coverage is more important than ever.

By Sandrine Desforges and Gianna Formica

Source: ExtensisHR

TODAY MARKS THE KICKOFF of Mental Health Awareness Week. This year, the Canadian Mental Health Association (CMHA), to advocate for universal access to mental health care, launched the campaign #MyStory, inviting individuals to share their own mental health stories with the hopes that storytelling will continue building the case for the need to provide free mental health services to all.

As prompted by the CMHA, we both decided to share our stories in hopes that we can contribute towards dismantling the persisting stigma surrounding mental health. As the wave of piqued public interest in mental health that accompanied the COVID-19 pandemic starts to fade, we must, now more than ever, continue talking about it and ensure that it finds its due place on the political agenda.

Sandrine’s Story

Something had clearly been off since early in the fall, and it kept worsening as the academic year went on. The number of absences from class I was accumulating had become an inside joke within the cohort, and some more observant MPP friends had caught me having a couple of breakdowns at Max Bell. 

I knew that to start feeling better, I’d need extra support, so I started taking steps towards accessing mental health professionals. I had already tried multiple times in the previous years to access therapy without success due to the shortage of psychologists in the public sector, long wait lists, and the increasingly high fees of private practitioners. But I considered my current situation more pressing: I couldn’t rely much longer on faculty agreeing to provide extensions for assignments, and I had started doubting my ability to complete my master’s program.

After months of attempts and many administrative delays and barriers, I was finally able to have an appointment with a psychiatrist. He diagnosed me with bipolar II disorder and put me on antipsychotics.

Nothing really prepares you for that.

In addition to continuing to deal with all the mental health challenges that led me to seek support to begin with, I also became overwhelmed by the various waves of mixed emotions that came with that diagnosis.

Starting mental health medication was extremely scary; I feared I would “lose my spark”. Sticking with it after the havoc its side effects had wreaked was even more challenging – a solid two months of adaptation during which I felt extremely dissociated for hours in the middle of the day, anxious, tired, and numb most of the time.

Getting this label glued to me forever was also daunting. Part of me felt like my whole sense of self, how I had always defined myself, had been stolen from me. I started wondering if everything I had ever liked about myself, my passionate and intense ways of being, my “unstoppable energy”, were truly only symptoms of hypomania. I also started fearing I would need to completely shift my life and career ambitions, because being bipolar couldn’t allow me to maintain a “normal” lifestyle. I felt extremely lost, and lonely.

At the same time, however, the diagnosis felt incredibly validating. I hadn't been able to keep up with daily life because I had been in a deep depressive episode – not because I was “weak” or “incompetent”, like the story I had been telling myself. Sometimes, when we struggle to show up to class and follow through with your engagements, or need extensions on deadlines for assignments, it's simply because we need to allow ourselves time to heal.

I was finally able to find a psychologist and start proper counseling, but because the mental health care provided outside of hospitals isn’t covered as part of Canada’s public healthcare system, I pay between $310 and $620 per month out-of-pocket for therapy. Receiving the mental health support I need is my biggest monthly expenditure apart from rent; definitely not an expense I had planned for in my limited student budget! Despite this, I’m still extremely grateful to be able to get help, because the absence of universal mental health care inhibits many people living with bipolar disorder or other mental health conditions from doing so. 

My story is probably similar to those of many other Canadians. Bipolar affects 2.2 percent of the Canadian population, but 1 out of 3 Canadians will be affected by a mental illness at some point in their lives. Canada needs to do better to support its citizens. Mental health care IS health care, and it needs to be recognized as such. 

Gianna’s Story

Since as long as I can remember, I’ve always suffered from anxiety. It’s a nagging feeling that claws at me, and I’ve never known life without it. Yet, it didn’t become debilitating until age 14, during my freshman year of high school. I began having anxiety attacks nearly every day, which led me to miss school and fail classes. I knew I needed help, and with the support of my mother, I went to a psychiatrist and was diagnosed with generalized anxiety disorder. 

This was only the start of my mental health journey. In the years following, my generalized anxiety improved, but I began suffering from obsessions and compulsions. By age 18, I was diagnosed with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). In retrospect, both ailments had been with me since I was a child, but I believe OCD was not diagnosed until years later due to the disease being misunderstood by the general public, and, yes, even mental health professionals. 

While generalized anxiety is becoming somewhat of a more normal topic in our lives, OCD is still widely misunderstood, downplayed as an organizational quirk and used as an adjective. In reality, OCD is a multifaceted and complex illness, with the World Health Organization (WHO) ranking it in the top ten of the most debilitating illnesses.

Essentially, sufferers of OCD obsess over “what if?” scenarios and unwanted intrusive thoughts. This ranges across many themes, from relationship fears, health fears, harm fears (fear of hurting someone you love or yourself), or the most commonly portrayed one in popular culture, contamination fears (fear of germs). To relieve oneself of these unwanted thoughts, the sufferer performs compulsions, which can range from reassurance seeking, mental checking, counting numbers, and washing hands excessively. As many psychologists point out, OCD themes attack anything the sufferer cares about – for many, this is their health, relationships, and sense of self. 

In my case, one of my common obsessions is related to health. Because these obsessions are so relentless, they lead to compulsions. At one point, an obsessive worry over a certain health condition led me to check my body for physical symptoms compulsively throughout the day and continue to schedule doctor appointments even after I received the all-clear. However, this is just one example among many. 

Luckily, OCD is highly treatable. For me, once I was diagnosed, I looked for an OCD therapist specializing in Exposure Response Prevention therapy. While my condition is an ongoing struggle, I can confidently say therapy and medication have helped me significantly. However, these stepping stones to treating OCD are not accessible to many Canadians. With roughly one to two percent of Canadians suffering from OCD, there needs to be mental health access for all Canadians and reduced stigmatization of this illness. By minimizing this disease as an organizational quirk, society is invalidating the OCD sufferer. OCD is a debilitating disease, and people should not have to endure it on their own. 

We recognize that mental health looks different for everyone, especially marginalized and Indigenous communities that face additional harms and barriers to accessing services, but we hope that by sharing our stories, Canadians will feel less isolated in their mental health struggles. 

Note: If you or a close one are looking to get mental health support, know that, even if they are insufficient, there are resources available. As a McGill student, you have access to the Student Wellness Hub. There are also many resources available in the broader Montréal community.

Sandrine Desforges (she/her) is a Master of Public Policy Candidate with the Max Bell School of Public Policy at McGill University. She has experience working in policy-making in the fields of mental health and well-being, post-secondary education, and prevention of gender-based violence.

Gianna Formica is the Chief Editor of The Bell Newsletter. She is a Master of Public Policy Candidate with the Max Bell School of Public Policy at McGill University. Her interests lie in global affairs and political communication.