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Bell’s Let’s Talk Day: Raising Awareness on Mental Health

Bell’s Let’s Talk Day: Raising Awareness on Mental Health

Get Informed & Help Those Who Are Suffering

Let’s face it, there’s a beast of a stigma about mental illness. Bell Canada is doing something about it with a campaign that’s built to raise awareness about the prevalence of mental illness, the faces of illness, what kind of care is available and a lot more.

Did you know that 20% of Canadians will experience a form of mental illness at some point in their lives? Count 10 friends or relatives – that would mean two of them would have or are suffering right now. Did you know that 2/3’s of them won’t get any help and will suffer alone because of the stigma associated with mental illness? That just makes it worse.

I was surprised to learn some of the facts – like – “Only 49% of Canadians said they would socialize with a friend who has a serious mental illness”. WTF? Excuse my passion for the issue but I’m just dumbfounded by that stat. It’s saying that 51% of Canadians wouldn’t socialize with a friend who had a serious mental illness. What do you say to that?

Check out the website: http://letstalk.bell.ca/en/

Ways to Help – http://letstalk.bell.ca/en/ways-to-help 

Spread the word on Twitter and Facebook and Bell will donate 5 cents to mental health initiatives. If you’re a Bell subscriber, make a long distance phone call and send a text message and they’ll donate 5 cents as well.

If you’re interested, get the Toolkit – http://letstalk.bell.ca/en/toolkit 

Last, here’s a link to their pdf on creating a healthy workplace – http://letstalk.bell.ca/pdf//tip-sheets/tips-for-the-workplace.pdf

This year Let’s Talk Day is on January 25, 2017

Bell Let's Talk Campaign

 

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4 Comments

  1. Emilia

    You say that “I’m just dumbfounded by that stat. It’s saying that 51% of Canadians wouldn’t socialize with a friend who had a serious mental illness.” I am not surprised with the stats. In the first place people are affraid of mental illness. What they do not know, they fear. Also, who is saying that 40% of these are not those 20% with mental illness and it is actually 30% of Canadians without mental illness that would not socialize with those who have mental illness. I am not serious about numbers, but I am serious about thinking that most people do not know much about mental illness and, the truth is, there is so much to know about it. There are so many different types and variants that it is not fair to group them in “mental illness”. To me, the term “mental illness” is kind of meaningless. It says nothing about real conditions. It is like saying “physical illness” for all other illnesses without trying to distinquish between breaking a leg and having cancer.

    Reply
    • Guy Reichard

      Thanks for your response. You’re right Emilia. What people don’t know, they fear and I feel that they did a pretty good job of raising some awareness for that exact purpose. We could be very cynical and just see it as a branding/marketing effort and though it would be true to an extent, we wouldn’t be appreciating the big picture. They created several pieces of information to distribute and a pretty good toolkit to help open people’s eyes and minds. It’s a start.

      Reply
  2. Adrian

    The laws need to be changed, the government has to stop treating mentally ill people like normal people. They do not have the ability to understand and do what’s right. My mother has schizophrenia, she’s been bouncing back and fourth to the hospital in a loop. She gets in a stable condition, she gets told, take your pills, and you’ll be fine. She only took them for a few days and then stopped. She didn’t believe she needed pills. So this dragged on and she was hiding in her room with me (I was 2-4 years old) for days. Till my grandpa had to insist the police to take her to the hospital and get her back into a stable condition. As the laws are now, as a family, we deserve the right to know about our mentally ill relatives. As of now, we know nothing about her schizophrenia, or her breast cancer. We had to threaten and force people to take care of my mother properly. (That meant keeping her in the building where it’s safe, not out in the streets) this was taking a huge toll on us trying to keep her healthy and safe. The laws around people and mentally ill are the same. I needs to be changed. When the mentally ill people go to a hospital for help, they are turned down. At a local hospital of mine, in the ER, there was a sign saying: no mentally ill people in the emergency room. This is ridiculous. It’s not right, nor fair, to turn someone down when asking for help from the authorities. Then that leads to murder. They want attention that they need help. But what do they get? Handcuffed, confused, wanting help, but they get thrown in jail. That isn’t right either. I can go on for days like this. I’m not doing this for my mother, but for everyone else. Because of schizophrenia and the laws, she won’t tell us that she had breast cancer. And she didn’t believe it. (It eventually got removed) but it was too late. Because of the laws, we can’t tell what’s going on with her and how we can help her. The cancer spread to her brain, and she was getting weaker and weaker. We had the hospice get a helper in her room to supervise and help her when needed. The guy who was in charge, wanted to take out the helpers at night, to save MONEY. we didn’t care less about money, we cared for our member of our family. So we threatens him to keep the helper in there. And it saved her again. She almost fell from the bed while she was sleeping. A few months later, my mother, passed away on September 4th 2011. The day right before my first day in grade 6. I still miss her to this day, but I am sure pissed off at the laws and how people treated her and others. Thanks for reading. -Adrian

    R.I.P. Marni

    Reply
    • Guy Reichard

      Thank you for sharing this Adrian. I can sense how much you loved and cared for you Mom and I’m sorry for your loss.

      I’m not here to judge your thoughts or opinions only to give people a chance to share their response to my posts. I do admit to having strong resistance to the proposition of treating people with mental illness differently by creating a whole new set of laws for them. In my mind and heart, that sounds extremely dangerous and scary. Perhaps new guidelines and protocols or even treatments could be in place that would serve the ill and their families better? You bringing attention to it makes a difference, so thanks for sharing.

      Guy

      Reply

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