If you browsed through social media on Jan. 30, chances are you saw #BellLetsTalk circulating around. Political leaders, celebrities, corporations and even McMaster University shared the hashtag in support of “ending the stigma” around mental illness.
Success and meaning can be found along many paths, but the paths can be rough and winding. | @McMasterSWC #BrighterWorld #BellLetsTalk https://t.co/fzBIjSte6G
— McMaster University (@McMasterU) January 30, 2019
But like #BellLetsTalk, McMaster’s mental health initiatives seem more performative than anything else. While offering “self-care” tips and hour-long therapy dog sessions can help students de-stress and perhaps initiate conversations about mental health, it alone is not sufficient.
This sentiment is shared amongst many other students and has been brought up time after time. It is truly disheartening then that the university seems to do little to meaningfully address students’ concerns.
https://twitter.com/calvinprocyon/status/1090777829510397952
Instead of investing in more counsellors at the Student Wellness Centre or restructuring their support systems on campus, starting Feb.4, McMaster is running Thrive Week. Thrive Week is a week-long initiative aimed to “explore [students’] path to mental health”. The week boasts events including yoga, Zumba and meditation circles.
There is no doubt that engaging in wellness and mindfulness activities, including activities like yoga and Zumba, can help alleviate some of the stresses of university and can positively benefit your mental health.
However, it is in itself not enough to actually help students overcome mental health issues. McMaster acknowledges that most students seem to experience, at least during some point in their undergraduate career, mental health issues. This is telling of a systemic issue. Mental health issues are largely attributable to socioeconomic factors. Financial strain, food insecurity and lack of a responsive administration can all factor into developing mental health issues as a student.
The best way to help students is to address the root of the problem, which often lies within the very structures of the university. Until McMaster addresses these systemic issues, yoga classes and wellness panels will do little to remedy students’ concerns.
Beyond addressing systemic issues, students struggling with mental health issues can’t colour their issues away; they require professional help. It is true that the university offers trained peer-support volunteers at services like the Student Health Education Centre and the Women Gender and Equity Network, but again, this is not enough. The responsibility of students’ mental health should not fall on the shoulders of other students.
If the university truly cared about their students’ mental health, they would invest in more counsellors and actively work towards ensuring that waiting times at SWC aren’t months on end. They would make systems for receiving academic accommodations more accessible, as they currently require students to provide documentation of diagnosed mental health issues.
Talk is cheap. So are free Zumba classes. While raising awareness and reducing the stigma around mental is important, what students need is real change to ensure there are actual support systems on campus. The university has a responsibility to make that change happen.
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By: Abdullah El-Sayes
Antibiotic resistance has been an issue for decades. Infections that were once easy to cure are no longer treatable as microbes have become resistant to the drugs that kill them. This leads to detrimental effects. It has been 30 years since the last antibiotic drug has been released. The World Health Organization accentuates that impact this may have on humanity and has released a list of pathogenic superbugs in an effort to increase antibiotic research and development through government and the private sector investments.
How did this start in the first place?
When antibiotics are prescribed to patients, they are expected to comply with the usage instructions and continue taking the drugs even if the symptoms have vanished to ensure all the pathogenic microbes are eliminated from the body. When this procedure is not abided, pathogens remain and drug-resistant bacteria may be formed via mutations and increase the population of resistant microbes. WHO claims that in countries without standard treatment, antibiotics are over-prescribed and overused by the public. This only adds to the problem. Antibiotics used for cattle within farms further contribute to the misuse of these drugs, and elevate the chance of microbes becoming drug-resistant.
What are the consequences we face?
A growing list of infections such as pneumonia, tuberculosis, blood poisoning and gonorrhoea are becoming harder to treat as they become more resistant to antibiotics. Some infections are now untreatable. An infamous example of this would be the TB pandemic. During mid-late twentieth-century, TB was once treatable using antibiotics, but infections resurged during the 1980s and thereafter due to drug resistant strains making them harder to treat. This case draws attention to the importance of antibiotic research and development. As more microbes become resistant, more antibiotics will be required to subside the associated infections.
What can we do to prevent further harm?
WHO claims that behavioural changes are important to reduce antibiotic resistance. These actions include being careful with vaccinations and sharing needles, always washing our hands, practising safer sex, and good food hygiene. Nonetheless, these measures are not adequate to eliminate neither these microbes nor their harm among us. Dr. Eric Brown and his team based at McMaster University have conducted promising work towards resolving this crisis.
What research is being done now, and what has been discovered?
This research team has tested 1440 drugs with expired patents against some of the most deleterious bacteria. The specific microbes were gram-negative bacteria, which have a rigid protective outer shell. Due to this, few antibiotics are able to defeat this specific bacteria type. However, pentamidine, a drug used to fight parasites in the 1930s, was found to form holes in the rigid outer shell of the bacteria. Additional antibiotics may then be supplemented to reach beyond the holes of the shell and finally devastate the bacteria and the infections associated with them. The experiments were conducted in dishes and mice. The results have been great, but still have a long way to go.
When asked about what the next steps are, Dr. Brown stated, “A trial in humans. … After all, pentamidine is already a drug that could be combined with other antibiotics in order to gather evidence in the clinic that this will work in humans.” He also added, “Pentamidine does have well known side effects, but these are manageable.”
Although this research is a relief to us, we cannot become too content, as resistant bacteria strains are not shy of showing up and causing damage.
“No one, including the public, should feel comfortable with the state of the art in antibiotic therapies. … The problem of drug-resistant bacteria is large and becoming worse every day,” said Dr. Brown.
Overall, antibiotic resistance is a serious tribulation we face, but research at McMaster University has taken a leap forward at resolving this issue. Let’s keep our fingers crossed for greater investment towards antibiotic research and development, so that we no longer have to stress about this pressing issue.
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Article contains mentions of suicide
Year after year, mental health is a consistent topic of discussion that sometimes gives a catalyst forward. The Student Mental Health and Well-Being Strategy, released back in 2015, is one example of this where the foundation of how the university approaches the subject radically changes.
The results came shortly afterwards as McMaster topped the list of Maclean’s magazine as the top ranked university in Canada for mental health services based on their Student Satisfaction Survey. There were a few problems with the survey itself, but it was a good sign.
Then nothing happened. The work was done. The Mental Illness Awareness Week continues to persist from before the strategy, you get a few sound bites from McMaster Student Union presidential hopefuls about what they would do to help improve our services and that is about it.
On June 26, a new bright yellow bench was introduced to the lobby of the Health Sciences Library. It was donated by the family and friends of Dr. Robert Chu, a graduate of our School of Medicine, after he committed suicide in 2016.
The Friendship Bench program was co-founded by Sam Fiorella in honour of his son, Lucas, who committed suicide in 2014. At the time of writing, there are 33 benches across Canadian secondary and post-secondary schools with 40 more in queue for fundraising. They are meant as a constant, visual reminder, to encourage peer-to-peer discussion and to connect students to available mental health resources. It works in collaboration with existing services.
It has put mental health back into the conversation that McMaster should always be having, and does it effectively with respect and purpose. My main concern is that the effort for the foreseeable future will stop there.
It is not that the inspiration does not seem to be there. As mentioned previously, presidential hopefuls bring it up all the time because it is, unfortunately, such as prominent issue. There are a few inhibiting factors that get in the way.
One of the things our original critique of Ehima Osazuwa’s platform during his campaign trail, later the 2015-16 MSU president, included was a point to his want to lobby for mandatory training for TAs in accommodating students with disabilities. The MSU vice-president (Education) at the time stated that he had resistance in implementing mental health-specific training for TAs, so it was arguable whether further training could be mandated for the entire university.
Despite this, the idea of training specifically related to mental health came up again in three different platforms in the campaign for the 2016-17 presidency including the victor’s, Justin Monaco-Barnes, and on two platforms in the 2017-18 presidency race.
Our current president, Chukky Ibe, had a platform that mentioned, “…providing funds for student groups who create independent programming in regards to the welcome week strategic themes,” including mental health, but it remains to be seen if he can follow through with that promise.
Let us hold those in charge more accountable for improving our services. While talking about it is important and the benefits of discussion guided by things such as The Friendship Bench and Mental Illness Awareness Week cannot be understated, we should continue to strive for more than empty promises or promises that cannot be followed through.
It should not take circumstances like this or a presidential campaign to start caring about the problem again.
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By: Sabrina Lin/ Meducator and Sarah Ge
Frustrated by the inefficiency of the therapy model used to support children with special needs in schools, McMaster School of Rehabilitation Science professor Cheryl Missiuna decided it was time for change. At the onset of her journey, she didn’t realize how her team’s innovative service delivery model would revolutionize the field of special needs therapy in elementary schools across Canada.
Prof. Missiuna has served as Senior Scientist and Director at the CanChild Research Centre for seven years and is leading the Partnering for Change project. The project introduces a novel service delivery model that allows occupational therapists to provide services to school-aged children with Developmental Coordination Disorder.
Touching nearly one in five children across Canada, DCD is a motor disability that affects a child’s ability to complete everyday self-care and academic tasks such as zipping up a jacket, folding a piece of paper or using a pencil for schoolwork.
In Ontario, children identified with DCD are referred to school health support services for occupational therapy, after which they spend up to 24 months on waitlists to receive in-school treatment. Without the proper support, children with DCD remain at a standstill in these crucial years of development. Meanwhile, secondary academic, mental health, and physical health issues unfold, making their needs more complex and difficult to cope long-term.
Promoting collaboration between families, educators, and therapists, Partnering for Change is distinct from previous therapy models as it takes a more holistic approach to special needs therapy. “We have had traditional models in the past of servicing children one child at a time. At Partnering for Change, we recognize that this one-child-at-a-time model is not effective in large part because the kids spend so long on waitlists. Even if we had an intervention that was effective, children are waiting two years to see a therapist,” Missiuna said.
In response to this issue, she has worked with families, educators, therapists and other stakeholders to create a socio-educational therapy model that sees the whole school as the client. This is a departure from the current medical model characterised by referrals, check-ins, and long wait times.
“[Partnering for Change] helps to support features within the school to change or improve the environment around the child,” she said. Unlike previous methods, the development of the model centers around the needs of the children it services. It provides support with a focus on the child, and employs strategies in the classroom to resolve problems the child is having.
Occupational therapists play an important role in the process. After observing the child in the education setting, they assist in the development of individual learning profiles that are catered to the needs of the child. OTs will then provide knowledge and resources to educators and parents by either suggesting specialized instructional strategies or recommending specific tools that enhance learning.
In Ontario, children identified with DCD are referred to school health support services for occupational therapy, after which they spend up to 24 months on waitlists to receive in-school treatment.
P4C has seen widespread success in the school community. Missiuna explained that this is largely due to participatory action research, an approach that incorporates the opinions of families into the project design. “From the very beginning, we made sure that we were developing a model that was going to target issues that were identified by families, educators, and the health care system,” she said.
As the John and Margaret Lillie Chair in Childhood Disability Research, Missiuna hopes to continue to develop P4C in the next four years, systematically expanding its outreach both provincially and nationally. The program has already been implemented in 40 schools across three school boards, including the Hamilton Wentworth Catholic District School Board.
In addition to contributing to the field of childhood disability research, the new integrated delivery model has the potential touch the lives of nearly 400,000 Canadian children who are affected by the disorder.
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By: Gwenyth Sage
I walked out of her room glowing. For the first time in a long time, I smiled a smile borne out of genuine joy. It was my last time seeing Kristy. I had written spontaneous poetry for friends before and wanted to do the same for her. I asked her for a word as inspiration for the poem. She gave me healing.
Kristy was my counselor, the guardian angel who selflessly held my hand and led me inch by inch out of the eye of the storm, through the turbulence, and onto safe ground. Kristy was tireless in picking up the pieces of the emotional mess that I was, helping me organize and reconfigure the thoughts that plagued and overwhelmed me.
Before Kristy, I was a different person. Mental illness is someone else’s problem, I thought. I was a nursing student after all — I’d know if something was wrong. It is an unfortunate reality that many people, like me, do not seek help until they find themselves in the middle of a mental health crisis. Changes in mood, eating habits, lack of motivation — these are easy to read as a list in a textbook but are difficult to identify in your everyday life especially when they’re commonly attributed to academic stress.
Shifts in mental wellness sneak up on you, inching ever so slowly that you are unwitting to the change. As Elizabeth in Prozac Nation muses, it comes “gradually, then suddenly” and “you wake up one morning, afraid that you’re gonna live.”
I went to the Student Wellness Centre on a whim for a drop-in counseling session to get a second opinion. It was an optional measure in my mind. I recalled from my mental health nursing placement that people were always the last to see when they needed help, so I went in to see what they had to say. My reaction to trauma was to ignore it, suppress it, and try to move on with life. While I wanted to be done with the trauma, it clearly wasn’t done with me. And so, when I told the mental health nurse in my initial appointment, the floodgates opened, and I was made acutely aware of the mental health crisis that I was in the middle of.
The fragility of the equilibrium I had tried to maintain by avoiding the psychological aftermath of trauma was revealed. Everything triggered me, everything hurt, everything was heavy. A response to constant pain is to numb. And for a while, I was numb, robotic; I was a zombie. As opposed to having low mood, which I did experience, more often than not, I had no mood at all. Emotion is an experience integral to the human experience and to lack such a basic part of myself was deeply distressing.
The results were in and I was to begin the most intensive, reflective, and painful chapter of my life with my counselor Kristy. The course of cognitive processing therapy would last ten weeks, and painstakingly, Kristy would break me apart, reset my bones, reassess, and repeat.
Counseling was not easy–the road to happiness never is. She challenged me with questions, understood and validated my concerns, and recalibrated me to be able to live amicably with my painful past. Pain is a part of the process in understanding and coming to terms with sensitive experiences. It is now just a memory, no longer lingering uncomfortably in the forefront of my conscious thought.
Avoidance is not therapy. You can shove it under a rug but you’ll never forget and it won’t go away. If you feel numb, anxious, or that your baseline mood has shifted to a level that is less than comfortable, please do not wait to seek help. In that state, you may be of the belief that you are irredeemable, unsalvageable, out of reach. It’s a lie. Help is available, and you are not alone.
Kristy gave me healing. This is what I gave her:
life was through a reel
the ins and outs of
an assembly line
revolving door of
broken mindsshe sprinkled
she sewed
she shared
the wisdom bestowed
upon her
by history
it takes one to know oneempathy is pain
empathy is wisdom
pain is temporarywisdom is not
To get help, please reach out to MSU services like Peer Support Line, Women & Gender Equality Network, and the Student Wellness Centre. If you are in a crisis, do not hesitate to call COAST, Hamilton’s 24 hour crisis outreach hotline at 905-972-8338. There is help, there is hope.
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You’re having one of those days where it seems as if the whole world has teamed up to make your life miserable and revel in the aftermath. One of those Murphy’s Law days when everything and anything that could go wrong is going wrong.
On those days, it doesn’t take much to push you off the edge – a jerk’s offhand comment in the elevator, a long line for food, or loud people in lecture. For the approximately eight percent of adults that the Canadian Mental Health Association cites as suffering from depression, this is a daily reality – a lethargy that bleeds into weeks, months, even years. Depression is not one-size-fits-all. It is different for every person. Yet it is as if there is some indescribable shift – a gear changing cogs – that causes your brain and body to run on ten percent of what it used to.
Like depression, anxiety disorders don’t discriminate based on age, gender, race or religion. Both are very real problems, and ones that need to be talked about openly. Too many times people hide their disease. When a friend asks why your eyes are bloodshot or if the bruises under your eyes are an indication of how much sleep you have been getting, the answer is “I think I’m coming down with something.”
The reality is that you have been sick for a while, just in a way that somehow seems less acceptable to voice. This has to stop. When people have pneumonia, they get antibiotics that clear up their lungs and help them breathe again. While people are not generally shy to say they have pneumonia, they are much more reluctant to claim that they have depression or anxiety. Which means that pneumonia gets treated, and depression and anxiety do not.
The Canadian Mental Health Association cites that once recognized, treatment can make a difference for 80 percent of people suffering from depression, allowing them to resume their daily lives. Yet five bullet points down is another staggering statistic. Only one in five children who need mental health services get the appropriate care. This discrepancy is a huge warning alarm demanding to be addressed.
To tackle this issue, we must attack at the root, the perception of mental illnesses. The circulation of phrases like “yesterday was such a rough day, I was super depressed” and “your text gave me a panic attack” does two things. It diminishes the gravity of depression and anxiety disorders as mental illnesses. Reducing a serious illness to the same lines as a bad day discounts the daily struggle to do something as simple as getting out of bed. Secondly, by misusing the terminology of these disorder in colloquial speech, it makes people retreat further into their shells. It makes sense that nobody wants to come out and admit that they need help when the people they are confessing to are the same ones throwing around jokes.
We need a society where someone is comfortable responding to “what did you do last night?” with “I was at the therapist’s office.” It is hard not to go through something like that and not feel alienated from the world. There are surprising amounts of people that go to see therapists but mask it with trips to the mall or the library. The problem is not the visits to the therapist. Those visits are intrinsic to the healing process in the same way that Tylenol relieves a chronic headache. To the people who are seeing or have seen therapists, you are infinitely brave for taking that step. The road to recovery is long and arduous, but what matters is that you are on this road. The problem comes in this desire to mask these visits, and what it is that leads people to feel like they have to.
The signs for a forward movement are there. We are coming fresh off of a week where Bell Let’s Talk promoted a culture of open discussion about mental health. The important thing is to keep the momentum going past those 24 hours. Depression and anxiety last much longer than that.
We need a paradigm shift in the way that mental disorders are viewed. It starts with every person accepting personal responsibility for those around us. We are not islands cut off from others. Our actions affect those around us, even when we are not aware of it.
It starts with open and honest conversations, with acceptance and with the idea that we need to be mindful of others. Think twice before you mock someone for what they are wearing or for riding the elevator from the third floor, because to them it could be a big deal that they got dressed and onto that elevator at all.
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On Jan. 28, Bell once again completed another successful “Let’s Talk” campaign, working to challenge the stigma associated with mental illness, and add to the $67.5 million they have already raised in support of mental health initiatives across Canada.
While anyone who advocates for mental health issues will tell you Bell is making a positive change, its efforts are far from perfect. If Bell truly wants to effect change in society and tear down the barriers experienced by sufferers of mental illness, they cannot limit themselves to focusing their efforts on combating “stigma” alone, as this wording neglects the systemic discrimination that those with mental illnesses experience.
To those unfamiliar, stigma and discrimination might seem interchangeable, but they actually have important differences. Stigma is the negative stereotype a person receives, and discrimination is the behaviour that results from this stereotype. This distinction might seem small, but language is powerful and subtle differences can drastically change something’s meaning.
In the case of Bell’s “Let’s Talk” by outlining “anti-stigma” and not “anti-discrimination” as one of their campaign’s four pillars, it undervalues and potentially ignores the existence of mental health discrimination. By only ever using the word “stigma,” and basing your entire campaign around it, you are effectively presenting the idea that those with mental health disabilities may face many negative stereotypes, but they experience little or no actual behavioural consequences. For a campaign that explicitly describes how “language matters” on its second page, it seriously fails to acknowledge the importance of this distinction.
This choice of wording and its resulting popularity becomes incredibly problematic when you read reports like those made by the Ontario Human Rights Commission on Nov. 7, 2012. The OHRC surveyed 1,500 people in Ontario, and found repeated examples of laws that actively allowed for discrimination against those with mental health disabilities. These examples included multiple accounts from sufferers who had been denied housing, employment and even medical care because of their mental health.
One example from the report says that significant research exists that supports the fact that many private landlords deny housing to people with mental health disabilities. The report cited multiple sufferers who were forced to sign contracts that stated that if their condition worsened, they would be evicted from their residence.
One victim even describes intense discrimination within the healthcare system: “after surgery, my surgeon told me, ‘had I known you were crazy, I wouldn’t have operated on you.’”
These examples reflect only some of the harsh discrimination those with mental illnesses face, and yet Bell and others advocating for mental health issues limit their discussion and focus to combating stigma alone.
It’s easy to see a simple choice of words as a relatively minor issue, but the difference between “stigma” and “discrimination” is a deeper issue than a mistaken campaign by Bell. If you don’t believe me, take a second to consider how other issues of prejudice in our society are described. When discussing racism, sexism, or homophobia, discrimination is the word of choice. However, when describing mental illness, “stigma” is the overwhelmingly popular term.
Don’t believe me? Try typing the word “stigma” into Google. You’ll find page after page discussing mental health issues, and a list of related searches pertaining to that same subject. Try that again with the word “discrimination.” Here the examples address race, homophobia, and human rights concerns, with no mention of mental health even after five pages. It quickly becomes clear that Bell’s decision to use the word “stigma” instead of “discrimination” reflects a much larger cultural issue.
I’m not the only one who feels this way. In fact, the very first resource Bell directs you to is a document from the Canadian Mental Health Association. Within the second paragraph the CMHA makes it clear that they have the same concerns:
“The problem with the word ‘stigma’ is that it puts the focus on the person’s difference instead of on the people who are setting them apart. Using the word stigma makes it seem different than racism, homophobia or sexism. It isn’t. So it’s time to talk about stigma for what it really is: prejudice and discrimination.”
Even organizations directly supporting the campaign feel it is crucial to distinguish the problematic nature of the word “stigma,” and yet Bell remains one of the many that make no such effort.
So why is it people seem to be uncomfortable with associating “discrimination” with mental illness? Do we really believe not receiving medical treatment because of one’s race is that different from not receiving it because of one’s mental health disability? While it’s pointless to compare whether one type of discrimination is worse than another, it’s unsettling to see that we as a society seem intent on labelling mental health as a separate issue, to the point where it even has its own distinct terminology.
We as Canadians need to aim higher than simply combating the stigma surrounding mental illness, and must work to remove the systemic barriers to success that exist for those affected by mental illness.
If Bell really wants to get people talking, ask Canadians why they’re so afraid to acknowledge mental health discrimination that they won’t even use the same words.
By: Anna Goshua
McMaster researchers have discovered that an anticonvulsant drug may be the key to fighting antibiotic resistant infections.
In Canada alone, an average of 22 hospitalized patients die every day as a result of acquiring antibiotic resistant infections. These “superbugs” are resistant to many medications and have grown increasingly prevalent. Though well over 100 antibiotics exist, their collective mechanisms of action boil down to one of the following: kill the bacteria, or stop its multiplication.
A group of McMaster scientists have discovered a potential new class of antibiotics that stop a part of the bacteria from being produced at all.
In a study led by Eric Brown, a professor of Biochemistry and Biomedical Sciences, a vast array of drugs were tested for how they affected ribosomes in bacteria. Ribosomes are critical to the function of a cell, as they are responsible for generating proteins.
The study found that lamotrigine, an anticonvulsant, is a chemical inhibitor that stops ribosomes from being produced in bacteria.
“Ribosome-inhibiting antibiotics have been routinely used for more than 50 years to treat bacterial infections, but inhibitors of bacterial ribosome assembly have waited to be discovered,” Brown said. “Such molecules would be an entirely new class of antibiotics, which would get around antibiotic resistance of many bacteria. We found lamotrigine works.”
Antibiotic resistance constitutes one of the biggest threats to global health, and is responsible for considerably lengthened periods of illness, higher mortality rates, and excessive medical care costs.
The discovery of lamotrigine’s hidden potential and the examination of its mechanism of action has led researchers to have a better grasp of how ribosomal assembly in bacteria works and how to formulate drugs to target that process.
While this research cannot address all the facets of the pandemic, it could allow for the rise of medications that can overcome the resistances that current bacterial strains have developed.
You really don’t know what it’s like to feel alone when you are attending a university who enrolls 30,000 students, living in a building that holds 1,000 of those, residing 20 minutes from three siblings, two parents, a dog and a girlfriend (the last two give all the kisses a guy could need) – yet each night you feel surrounded by nothing but concrete and white paint. This is not only a personal rendition; this is one story out of the thousands attending our Canadian universities.
I felt alone in my six bedroom advertised “suite,” adorned with a fully-furnished bedroom, spacious living room and squeaky marble kitchen. At $630 a month most would call me spoiled, and if they knew I was a humanities student some might have far more selective words for this “total waste of money” at my parent’s hard-worked expense of course. This attack of negative stigma towards the faculty of humanities is a relentless one in this recessive economy.
Take online forums who have recently revealed to me the surprising factoid that I am “literally burning my parent’s money” but then maybe I should also stop googling “Is humanities a good major?”
However, this piece is not going to be a heroic defense to the faculty of humanities, but as the sarcastic undertone reveals: I feel like I am working towards a worthless degree – better yet, a worthless life.
What my rented room did not advertise was the impending deep depression awaiting me right behind the pretty door. I was a first year who was not living on-campus. Admittedly, that was my fault as I had missed the residence application deadline, in what was a grand display of my university level intelligence. I lived in a dark pit, in which it was in every way. It may have looked like the Ritz of residences but I hated everything inside its walls. I lived with four other upper-year strangers, two of whom spoke little English and one of whom I saw only twice over four months of living together. They locked themselves in their own separate rooms, scurried to the washroom when needed, generally just kept to themselves and I followed suit.
I was miserable. I fell into a routine that started as eat-class-sleep but evolved into sleep-sleep-sleep and sleep some more. I had gone to class with all intentions of getting amazing grades, but that spark faded - fast. All-nighters for essays turned into no essay at all and missing a couple classes turned into no class at all. The long and the short of it is: I got lonely and gave up on everything else because of it. I felt the pressure of academic success and faltered on it when I didn’t have anybody around me for support. I saw my university career as useless in four years so I thought I might as well admit defeat now.
I lost the one thing I took for granted: human interaction. This depressive state exists in student houses, apartments, commuters and even packed residences on-campus. Students become hermits when they have to budget their time around emotionally strenuous pressure to perform well in school. They just do not have time to properly recuperate from stress through relaxation and socialization, in what I would say, essentials to not kill yourself.
All through secondary and post-secondary education we students are bombarded with fear - you could call them threats. We are told three basic premises: “you need to go to university”, “you need good grades in university to get a good job”, “don’t do any of those two and you will be a garbage man for the rest of your life.” These are the statements that the modern student mind revolves around. These authoritative intimidations are assertions of attitude coming from the teachers, parents and students - these people being the most influential to the education system. It’s not like these are completely false statements at all; the economy is still recovering from 2008, fewer jobs are to be had, existing workers are retiring later and especially a growing number of high school graduates, out of societal imposition, choose to go to university creating an insanely competitive environment in comparison to previous decades. The university degree and ever-more so the quality of that degree is as well rising in importance as much as it is falling in value, as larger percentages of first-world populations are acquiring undergraduate degrees. The contemporary educational environment is one that cultivates mental illness through the increased importance of its unfortunate necessity in capitalistic society.
It is easy to be just a number in university, as it is much too easy to fall into a routine of a never-ending lonely loop. Waking up, going to class, coming home, (maybe) doing homework, eating a couple times a day, watching a movie, going to sleep becomes a rudimentary and rigidly lonesome life. You repeat this process daily, all with insurmountable expectations, creating a mountain of stress.
This increasing importance on educational performance is reaching breaking point for many students. With the pressure coming from all aspects of their lives, a student can become helpless in a sea of papers due the next morning. Any human-being can fall to overwhelming pressure, students are no different.
Supported by shocking national statistics, this illustrates a university experience that entails a life of limited fun in fall to the need to devote as much time to educational performance at the expense of human saneness.
This is an epidemic with no clear cut solution in this capitalistic society. We can obviously start by building a stronger economy but all that is known is that mental health should always precede a mark given out by a Scantron machine.
People are plenty aware of mental illness in society, but without a physical image for the disease, mental illness thrives on its covertness.
It seems university students are falling to mental illness faster than they are graduating.
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Alon Coret / Student Health Education Centre
During this past Reading Week, I participated in the Mac Serve Program, right here in Hamilton. The six days were densely packed with learning opportunities and exposure to some shocking realities.
Our group explored issues surrounding food (in)security and youth poverty, volunteering at places such as the Good Shepherd, Living Rock (youth center), community healthcare clinics, food drives and more.
One theme that seemed to thread throughout the week was the relationship between health and poverty, and how each affects the other. What I realized more than ever before was that poverty shapes our health in terms of our access to proper nutrition, sanitation and a safe place to live. At the same time, our health affects our financial situation; succumbing to disease and disability may prevent us from being able to work and integrate within society, and treatments can be costly.
A 2010 study known as the Code Red Series (Hamilton Spectator) shows the health-wealth connection better than any other. To determine the health status of different areas in the city, the average age of death was compared among Hamilton‘s neighborhoods. One West Mountain area had an average age at death of 86.3 years (2006-2008), while another near Wellington and Barton stood at 65.5 years. This staggering 21-year difference represents nearly a whole generation, and the main cause for the disparity is income. To put this in context, the West Mountain neighborhood’s life expectancy is five years higher than Canada’s national average. Meanwhile, the low-income North End neighborhood’s life expectancy is comparable to Nepal, Pakistan and Mongolia.
While visiting a community health center on Rebecca Street (Hamilton Urban Core), we learned about issues pertaining to medical services, specifically within the homeless and welfare-dependent demographic. It turns out, universal healthcare is not always so universal: most family physicians are paid on a fee-for-service basis, and often choose not to deal with more ‘problematic’ patients – the elderly, the homeless, the mentally ill or the severely handicapped. These groups mean more work for the physician, so it’s more efficient to take on young, healthy patients. Moreover, many Hamiltonians living in deep poverty do not have health cards. The majority of these are homeless individuals who could not replace a lost card, simply because they have no permanent address. To assist this demographic, the Hamilton Urban Core provides monthly health card replacement sessions (through the Ontario Health Ministry), and allows the homeless to use the center’s address as their own. Additionally, the staff working at the Urban Core are salaried, meaning they are paid the same amount irrespective of the number of patients they see. This is an important difference that separates them from other healthcare providers as there is no incentive to quickly ‘process’ as many patients as possible. Instead, the staff can tend to the complex problems of their target population. Common issues include mental illness, intellectual disability, physical handicaps, STIs, addictions or perhaps a combination of these.
Another key health-wealth connection was evident in the food banks we visited. Despite the immense quantities of food being donated, quality and variety appeared to be major issues: it’s always the same brands, the same foods and the obvious lack of fresh fruits and vegetables. Food banks house piles of Kraft Dinner and canned tuna, but these nonperishables do not meet our nutritional needs. It is not easy, of course, to supply fresh produce and dairy products given quick expiry and the need for refrigeration. Nevertheless, I could not stop thinking about the lack of quality food for populations in need. Even the hot meals served by food banks seem to play variations on a theme: pizza, pasta, tasteless salad, some meat and pastries (carbs, carbs, and a bit of protein). Clearly, living off the food bank diet is not good for long-term health.
Our minds, our bodies, and our social position are all intertwined; taking away from one can have serious ramifications on the others. The Romans were keenly aware of this connection – mens sana in corpore sano (a sound mind in a healthy body). When thinking about poverty, it is important to keep in mind its consequences beyond material well-being.
