Let's Talk. About me, for starters.

If you've been online today, or if you've turned a TV on over the past month, you know it's Bell Let's Talk Day. The idea behind Let's Talk is to end the stigma around mental illness.



Last year I publicly wished a company I actually respected was behind this initiative. For my American readers, Bell and its competitor Rogers are the Verizon and Comcast of Canadian companies: monolithic entities with less than zero customer service and an employee culture that could best be described as "hellishly toxic".  My own experiences with Bell have been largely positive, but many friends of mine have had all manner or horrors perpetrated upon them--in some cases, horrors that actually seemed purposely designed to inflict mental illness on people. And so I am tremendously conflicted about this initiative of theirs. Remember when Barack Obama won a Nobel Peace Prize while serving as Commander-in-Chief of a country at war (he's since bombed seven nations, and those are just the ones we know about)? Yeah, we're talking that level of hypocrisy.

However.

There's the matter of the message, and the message is not just important but critical. The stigma around mental illness has to end. And I'll wholeheartedly support any message this imperative no matter who's putting it out there. Putting the "Bell" in "#BellLet'sTalkDay" sticks in my craw...but let's talk anyway.

Let's also listen, because listening is even more important than talking. I can talk all I want about mental illness, the horrors of living within it and the horrors needlessly and thoughtlessly inflicted from without on those already just trying to cope...and if you don't listen, I've wasted my words.

So listen for a moment while I talk.

In a sane world, I would be able to tell you about the people I know who either suffer currently or have suffered in the past from mental illness. Nobody raises an eyebrow if you say you've got the flu, or you had whooping cough as a kid, or that you're blind, or deaf, or...or...or...but talk about depression, anxiety, schizophrenia or any number of other disorders and you can very easily ruin lives. Lives of people I know and love, respect and admire, lives of people who contribute a great deal to the world. And so I will not tell you about these people. Suffice it to say there are a lot of them.

But I can talk about myself.

I'm afraid to go and get diagnosed, I'll say that first.

I know the words they're apt to use. Depression, without a doubt. Bipolar disorder, quite possibly. Social anxiety, yes, that's a given. Other, even more exotic and flavourful words: maybe. I've written before about the disgusting way perfectly normal emotions and behaviours are diagnosable now. I stand by everything I wrote there, but I'll tell you right now that you don't have to go searching very hard to find diagnoses for Ken Breadner. But I don't want to hear them. Because when I do, then it will be official. I'll be mentally ill.
That so many are mentally ill along with me doesn't lessen the stigma. It should, but it doesn't.

I can only speak to the illnesses I know. Depression, for instance, is not feeling down in the dumps, being blue, or having an off day. Depression is deadening. You no longer care for much of anything or anyone, even the people who care for you (because nobody really does; if they did, you wouldn't feel this way, and that's how it reinforces itself).  Getting out of bed requires much more effort than it's worth. The only way your mind works is to process your surroundings and sense impressions and turn every last one of them into a good reason to be depressed.  Actually, no, that's not even close to what depression is. You know what depression is? Depression has two possible outcomes once it gets severe enough:

1) killing yourself, because you can't muster the energy to go on living and nobody would notice or care if you died; or
2) not killing yourself because you can't muster the energy to try it and  nobody would notice or care if you died.

Bipolar disorder incorporates that depression with a kind of euphoric, irrational (and ultimately utterly fake) happiness which grates on everyone. There's no reason for it, but it's so welcome after the depths of depression that you grab on to it anyway and ride it wherever it goes. And where it always goes is right back down into the abyss...which seems even deeper from having been so recently shrugged off (sometimes for mere minutes). Bipolar disorder leaves every day completely unpredictable...the same thing that sent you sky-high yesterday is apt to crush you this morning.

Social anxiety, in its worst form, will leave you housebound, terrified to interact with the world in any way at all lest you be judged, criticized, and humiliated. Often you know this fear is unreasonable, that in reality there's nothing to be afraid of at all...but try telling your hindbrain that. It knows differently. It knows, for instance, that everyone is thinking how worthless you are and how stupid you look and that everybody who looks polite is only trying very hard not to laugh at you. Any second now they'll no longer be able to contain the snickers.

All three of these disorders, which are linked, exist on a spectrum the same way physical illness does. Also,  you can have the flu that gets complicated by pneumonia which aggravates your pre-existing asthma and it's very roughly similar to the way mental disorders play off each other. I can't speak to the myriad of other disorders that are out there -- those are for others to talk about, and for us to listen. I can say that one of the best ways to treat any mental disorder is with care and compassion.

It takes a lot of both to know how best to engage with people who are suffering. Sometimes it's impossible. In cases like that, what people need is a doctor and medication. If you ran across somebody with a broken leg laying in a gutter, you wouldn't leave her there, you would take her to a hospital. The same holds true with broken brains. Depending on the disorder, therapy, medication, or a combination of both may effect a cure or at least allow the person (and never forget it's a person, not a patient) to manage his disease more comfortably for himself and others.

I assure you that several people you know are suffering from some sort of mental illness. Maybe you are yourself. Let's talk about it. Let's talk...and let's listen.