About 20 per cent of Canadians deal with a mental health issue each year. That means there’s a good chance that about one in five of your family members, friends or colleagues will face the new or ongoing experience of illnesses related to anxiety, depression, personality disorders, organic brain disorders or schizophrenia. Without treatment, the joy will be stolen from their lives, often to be replaced by anguish, confusion and isolation. There is a chance they may become one of the more than 400,000 Canadians who deliberately harm themselves each year or, tragically, worse.
And yet, when mental illness strikes, our common reaction is often to treat the symptoms with disdain or dismissive comments, such as, “Get with the program,” or, “Pull up your socks.” We often choose not to listen. This makes it all too easy for those afflicted with mental illness to suffer in needless shame and silence, particularly when they may be among the 10 to 20 per cent of young people with a mental disorder.
Former National Hockey League goalie and sports commentator Kelly Hrudey knows what is like to be the parent of child afflicted with a mental disorder. His daughter Kaitlin has struggled with obsessive-compulsive disorder and anxiety since she was a child. She missed out on many activities because of it, begging her parents not to make her go out.
“We thought it was maybe just a phase,” Hrudey told Gazette reporter Doug Neuman. “That’s kind of what I was hoping .... Then I was to learn later that it is a life-long thing she has, and hopefully she has all the tools and she’s able to manage it.”
Hoping to help other families facing similar challenges, the Hrudeys will be speaking at the Arden Theatre on Sept. 25, in an event hosted by the St. Albert Community Foundation.
“We just wanted people to know that we’re going through it, and that there is no shame in having a mental illness, and there’s no shame in having a family member that has a mental illness,” Kelly says.
Beginning on the front page of today’s Gazette and continuing each Saturday for the next two weeks, reporters Neuman and Scott Hayes will examine mental health issues among the young with a focus on the causes, experiences of those living with disorders, the signs and symptoms and treatments. The series will end on Wednesday, Sept. 23, when they look at the way forward and the importance of discussing this potentially devastating condition so that those faced with the challenges it brings can seek early intervention.
Dr. Michael Trew, a psychiatrist with Alberta Health, says treating such mental illness is critical at a time when young people are developing in so many ways.
“If you get a kid who’s sick for any reason, such as mental illness, and that puts them on the sidelines for months or a year, that really interrupts the normal growth and development of their social lives, of their school lives, and getting on with the rest of their lives – not to mention what it can do to their own sense of who they are and their self-esteem,” he says.
We strongly urge parents to come to the Arden to hear what Kelly and Kaitlin Hrudey have to say.
