Program for city students teaches coping strategies
Reid Bricker, Jill Tardiff, Ronald Wilderman. Those three names have beat out a bleak rhythm in repeated critics’ calls to revamp mental-health services in Winnipeg.
Behind the headlines and beyond the doors of overcrowded hospitals, however, there are glimmers of hope for a brighter future.
Taylor Demetrioff and Ray Houssin have both struggled with mentalillness and are among a group of volunteers and staff with community agencies hard at work to reduce stigma and help kids learn strategies to improve their mental health.
Demetrioff co-ordinates the youth-focused MILE 5 (Mental Illness Literacy Education) program run by the Canadian Mental Health Association of Manitoba and Winnipeg, a community agency United Way Winnipeg provides with core funding.
“It’s about creating a safe space and about showing students we can talk about these things. It’s a judgment-free zone, and it shows them that mental illness doesn’t need to be scary,” Demetrioff said of the classes he leads.
Bricker, 33, vanished after being released from a Winnipeg hospital a year ago last month. His remains were discovered in the Red River last summer.
His parents later reported their son had left a suicide note saying he was “sorry” before his final disappearance, which was also the last of his three hospital admissions for mental illness.
Bricker’s disappearance, along with the suicide of former principal Tardiff and the death of Wilderman, who had autism and died when he was supposed to have a health agency looking out for him, became the province’s highest-profile cases in the calls for better hospital, institutional and community services in 2015.
The good news is there’s a foundation in place to build on.
MILE 5 is a five-day, school-based program taught to kids in grades 7, 9 and 11 in two city school divisions. The program is designed to arm kids with coping strategies and an awareness of community services to help manage mental-health challenges.
Demetrioff leads the sessions — one period a day for five days in a row — with the teacher present and brings in someone such as Ray Houssin, who’s learning how to manage his own mental illness.
Houssin, a 57-year-old school principal, shares his own story with students and opens the floor for discussion. The appearances make him feel like he’s giving back something of value, he said.
He explains to kids mental illness isn’t like a cold virus you shake off. Mental illness is often chronic, but there is hope, and there can be healing.
“More and more I can say I recognize the triggers that set me off. Now, I’m managing my illness daily,” Houssin said.
Both Houssin and Demetrioff note children who have taken part in the program are understanding and receptive to the information.
“I’ve always been impressed with the resiliency of kids. I don’t think we give them enough credit for being able to handle sensitive issues,” Houssin said.
Houssin said he’s battled a sense of inferiority all his life. His coping strategy was to be an overachiever, which drove him to be a workaholic until his health broke down, and he was forced to leave the workforce and go on disability.
“It’s important for students to realize I’m not an expert, that this is how my life with mental illness affected me. And it’s important to say to kids how it could affect them differently,” Houssin said.
The Canadian Mental Health Association is one of nine United Way-supported agencies that provided mental-health support to more than 7,000 students and young adults last year.
This story is one in a series to support the 2016 United Way campaign. The charity announced four goals for its Three Years for a Better Winnipeg plan, unveiled this fall: to provide more mentors to kids; to give 4,000 more kids access to mental-health services; to connect more people with job skills and money-management training; and to help 2,700 more families with support services close to home.
If you would like to help, please donate to the United Way Winnipeg online at UnitedWayWinnipeg.ca/give or call 204-477-UWAY
alexandra.paul@freepress.mb.ca
*This article appeared in the November 12th edition of the Winnipeg Free Press