Mental Health Camp

This is a call for presenters at MentalHealthCamp in Vancouver on July 10th, 2010. MentalHealthCamp (the Twitter hashtag is #mhcyvr10) will take place at the Aquatic Ecosystems Research Laboratory (AERL) building on the Point Grey Campus of The University of British Columbia.

We will have 15 sessions between 45 and 60 minutes’ length.

The topic is “Breaking Our Silence. Setting us Free.” We would like to examine how silence hurts mental health, and, even more importantly, how using our voice helps us achieve and maintain mental health.

We are looking for session leaders who speak from personal or professional experience with mental health or mental illness.

We will have 9 slots for prearranged speakers (e.g. approved by the selection committee), and will keep 6 slots open for “Mental Moose” – a continuation of the unconference tradition of MooseCamp at Northern Voice. During Mental Moose, participants who are interested in leading a session can pitch them on Saturday morning with a quick 30-second talk. Everyone will then vote on which sessions will be presented, and the winning sessions will be scheduled.

Also, we would like to experiment with having one or two virtual sessions. Do you live in New Zealand and would like to present? Are you unable to leave your children and your dogs alone in rural Quebec but have an important story to share? If you have the technical know-how, let’s talk about using technology to bring you right into our conference here in Vancouver.

Would you like to present? If so

• please contact us and send us a short proposal, containing
• your name(s) and email,
• an overview over what you would like to discuss (100-200 words), including how your talk relates to the topic of “Breaking Our Silence. Setting Us Free.”
• a bio (30-100 words)
• indicate your social media presence (e.g. your blog, twitter address, etc.)
• tell us a little (30-100 words) about your personal and/or professional experience with mental health and mental illness
• indicate whether you’d like to present in real life or whether you propose a virtual session

This call for speakers is open during all of May 2010 – which, incidentally, is Mental Health Month.

Thanks to the kindness of the directors of the Fisheries Centre and the Institute for Resources, Environment and Sustainability, I was able to secure a venue for Mental Health Camp Vancouver 2010. It will be held at the UBC Aquatic Ecosystem Research Laboratory (AERL), located at 2202 Main Mall in Vancouver, B.C.

I am a graduate from the Doctor of Philosophy in Resource Management and Environmental Studies (RMES) program at UBC, and I spent many years of my PhD studies working at my office there. I still maintain very strong ties with my former home department, and I am very grateful that they decided to support this worthy endeavour.

The map below shows the location of AERL. Of course, needless to say, it will be my shared responsibility with everyone at MHCYVR10 to to leave the premises in a clean, tidy, secured and undamaged state at the end of the event. I can’t wait! We have a venue, we have a date, we are about to launch the Call for Proposed Talks. We are in business!

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Breaking our Silence.  Setting us Free.

That is the motto for this year’s Vancouver MentalHealthCamp on July 10.  (Thanks, Cathy, for coming up with these great words!)

Silence, hiding, pretending – they are often involved in suppression, oppression, repression; it’s no pun to observe that these words are intricately related to depression.   It’s also interesting to note that silence, hiding and pretending are protective measures; they have saved many lives, physically and emotionally.

Which makes me think of the famous Anais Nin quote:

And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.

So this is one of the things we want to explore this year at MentalHealthCamp.  What happens when we take the risk to blossom, despite – or with – our emotional/cognitive/chemical idiosyncracies?  What is the pain of silence, and how does it impact our mental and physical health?  What happens in that strange moment when we decide to voice our truth and some of the people around us react with silence on their part?  And what does that freedom look like on the other side of silence?

Over at Sonya’s World is an interesting rant on the topic of “Normal“, which had started with a post on the same topic over at PsychCentral.  I started a comment and it got longer and longer so I thought I’d post it here:

Really interesting stuff you say here, and thanks for the rant.

Having seen “normal” and “abnormal” from many perspectives since I was, say, 3 months old, I hope it’s okay if I add a few shades of gray here.

I’d like to say that normal, too, has many shades. The couple you saw walking on the street? Are they normal? Maybe once they get home they’re done being lovey-dovey and he’ll beat her up because of how the coffee he just had interacts with the steroids he’s been using. We don’t know.

Maybe we all have our own “normals”, and maybe they change. It took me a long time to realize, for example, that suicide wasn’t a “normal” way to die, I had seen so much of it when I grew up. Now that I have a different life, I have a new “normal”. That includes, for instance, having only supportive friends. Is that normal? It also includes taking calls from people on Sunday night who are going crazy with anxiety. Is that normal? I don’t know, but it’s fine with me.

Grohol from PsychCentral says “maybe it’s best to think of ‘normal’ as a range of life experiences where we can live the life we want, without significant health or mental health impediments.” Is that perhaps what you’re talking about? You don’t want to spend time at the psych ward, you don’t want to be constantly afraid of your wife killing herself.

Then there’s another “normal”, and that is the statistical normal. It’s one that psychiatrists use a lot (without maybe even thinking about the word “normal”). If you score above a certain point on the hypomania dimension of the MMPI, you’re not “normal” anymore, meaning you score higher than the other gazillion people who’ve been tested on the MMPI. What does that mean? Not much without looking at the rest of your life.

With regard to people who say to those with major mental health issues, “you should do yoga” or “try dandelion wine” – well, in a way, that’s not “normal”, either, in the way that common sense is normal. Because there’s nothing normal (or common sense) about suggesting an umbrella to deal with a tornado or using a garden hose to handle a raging house fire, and those well-meaning (and ignorant) suggestions are pretty much along the same line.

Really, it’s all contextual, I believe. As for the New York times article, I know that there can be (notice the “can”) an important creative aspect to some experiences of mental illness. My father, who spent the majority of his life being bipolar, was an example of that, John is another.  Is that “normal”? I don’t know; in fact, I don’t care, it seems irrelevant. Does it make sense in the context of some individuals’ lives affected by mental illness? that’s the question I find interesting.

The experience is different for everyone, and most importantly, everyone deserves to live a life that feels good and right to them, a life with as much stability and predictability as they need in order to wake up most mornings (yes, mornings, not nights) and say, okay, we can do this.

Wondering how we came up with the idea of MentalHealthCamp? Here is the original post. And now I came across a video of the panel Coping Digitally at Northern Voice 2009 that was the beginning of it all. Interested? Here it is

When Raul and I conceived of Mental Health Camp last year literally on the back of an envelope, we didn’t think it would take us where it did, and that it would inspire so many people.  We are giddy to tell you that there will be a Mental Health Camp Toronto as well this year!  Here’s what they are up to:

MentalHealthCamp Toronto — an unconference about Mental Health

Join us May 28, 2010, at the Bram and Bluma Appel Salon, Toronto Reference Library

OPEN CONVERSATIONS / MENTAL HEALTH 2.0

MentalHealthCamp Toronto (MHCTO) is a facilitated, participant-driven, web 2.0-enabled conference centered around mental health. MHCTO builds on the experience of the international HealthCamp movement and the first MentalHealthCamp held in Vancouver in 2009.

Mental health concerns everyone. So if you’re a mental health professional, someone with lived experience of mental health problems, a family member or friend of a person with mental health problems, or have a passion or an interest in the topic, then MentalHealthCamp is for you! MHCTO also welcomes technophiles, change architects and all sorts of social media types.

Go here for more.

This is a re-publish of my post on my personal blog. I thought it would be fitting to have it here too.

photo credit: foxandfeathers

I’ve been pondering for weeks about the slogan for Mental Health Camp Vancouver 2010 (Isabella Mori, one of my closest friends and my co-organizer for MHC is in Europe at the moment, and she has been having to deal with personal stuff, so I haven’t wanted to bother her with bouncing ideas back and forth). We agreed before she left that the theme for Mental Health Camp Vancouver 2010 would be around how silence fosters and perpetuates the stigma of mental illness (stigmatization through silence). Not speaking about mental illness and mental health neglects its importance and cripples the sufferer of any mental illness by not having anyone to tell or anywhere to turn.

Recently, two celebrity parents (Marie Osmond and Walter Koenig) suffered the painful loss of their children, former child-actor Andrew Koenig (who took his life and whose body was found in Stanley Park in Vancouver) and 18-year-old Michael Blosil (who according to reports, leapt to his death this past Friday). A recent TrueSlant article by my friend Lorraine Murphy makes the point that

Celebrity is a two-edged sword, ask anyone famous enough to have an IMDB page, but sometimes that sword can be uplifted to cut through barriers which should never have existed in the first place.

To which I say – ABSOLUTELY TRUE. Lorraine is right. The fact is, if Walter Koenig, Marie Osmond and many other celebrity parents and celebrities themselves can encourage people afflicted with deep depression to seek help when afflicted with suicidal thoughts, the better. I have on more than one occasion said that if there’s anything that I do that has an ulterior motive is use my social media and online popularity to highlight worthy causes (like cancer research, HIV prevention and speaking out about mental health). That’s mostly why I do what I do.

photo credit: keepitsurreal

Up until November of 2003, I had NEVER been afflicted with depression. An overachiever pretty much since I was born, I was one of five amazing brothers. I have had a life that I wouldn’t trade for anyone. Outstanding brothers, adoring parents and grandparents and uncles and aunts, a family that many wish they had born within. And I clearly remember when I told my Mom and Dad “wow, I am so lucky … I don’t know what depression feels like…” Little did I know that I would be heartbroken less than 2 weeks after I said this.

I survived my heartbreak, in no small part thanks to the support of my family, my parents (Mom, primarily) and my friends. And I did seek professional help (I went to Student Services’ Counselling). Five years later, in late November of 2008 (a few months before I even thought about organizing Mental Health Camp), at around 2.40am, I started feeling horribly depressed (not sure why, to this day). I felt like a loser, someone who had accomplished so much in previous years only to be a nobody then. And through talking on GTalk with Lorraine Murphy, she got me out of my rut, helping me reframe how I perceived myself more in line with how others perceived me (a highly successful blogger who came out of nowhere and became very visible in the Vancouver social media community).

Credit: Karen Hamilton (Tiny Bites) on Flickr

After that one episode on November of 2008, I never have felt again really that depressed. I have, on occasion, felt down, blue, and I recognize that I am strongly affected by Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD) so I have a SAD lamp always available. But I always monitor how I feel, and I always have close friends on speed-dial, Twitter, Facebook and Google Talk.

I have many, many friends who have spoken out openly about depression and silence and speaking out and how it has affected them (recent ones I’ve found are Smutty Steff’s and Cheeky Cici’s. Sitting in a panel at Northern Voice ‘09 on Coping Digitally (organized by Airdrie) and listening first hand the stories of how my friends Tod, Air and Isabella have faced depression/bipolarity, was the one thing that galvanized me to jump and tell Isabella that we needed to organize Mental Health Camp.

Terra makes a really good point – just because we speak out, it doesn’t mean that everyone HAS to speak out. But we both have chosen to do so. I have chosen to speak out, about homophobia, about stigma and mental illness, about the issues that matter to me. I choose to share how I feel because, as Robert Ballantyne pointed out to me on a phone conversation, people appreciate the fact that, no matter how successful or how much of an overachiever I am, I always show myself as I am. I show myself vulnerable.

I have shown you, on this post, that at least on two occasions, I’ve been deeply depressed. And I survived. Thanks to my own internal strength, but also thanks to the fact that I shared how I felt with people who love me and care about me. I have found that sharing the story of my life on my blog, on my Twitter account, helps me a lot. It helps me rebuild strength on a daily basis. You all, who read my site and my tweets, all of those who don’t read my online stuff but with whom I share a bond of love in real life as well, strengthen me on a daily basis.

I choose to speak out because I am tired of silence. So, while I have found the actual motto that I wanted to use for Mental Health Camp Vancouver 2010, “Seeing the Invisible, Speaking about the Unspoken”, I can’t really use it. Why? Because it is the title of a position paper on homophobia in sports by the The Canadian Association for the Advancement of Women and Sport and Physical Activity (CAAWS). So, lovely title, but a cause near and dear to my heart already owns it.

So, I came up with this other motto/slogan – “Breaking free from the shackles of silence: Speaking out about mental health through social media”. It may be a tad too long, and of course, I need to run it by Isabella first, and share it with the rest of the organizing committee, but I figure it kind of encompasses what Isabella and I are trying to accomplish: provide a safe haven for folks to share their stories, to stop the silencing.

Thoughts, as always, most welcome.

@Abeeliever from Una Vita Bella on Twitter had a fabulous idea: start a regular mental health chat on twitter (Tuesdays at 9pm CST – hashtag #mhsm). I was fortunate enough to take part in it and will give you a taste of what we talked about. Unfortunately I can’t give you everything because Twitter acted up and only let me review part of it.

What does social media do for mental health?

• social media gives us a bigger voice and more choice without the fear of stigma.
• social media can help change laws that govern society and the workplace.
• further insight, inspiration, and communication
• recently lost my best friend…not in a good state of mind. My twitter friends, I believe, are saving my life
• Blogging has been a source of healing and also an avenue for spreading awareness, as well
• the transparency of social media is a wonderful antidote against the stigma associated with #mentalhealth

Mental Health in the work place

• companies lose a lot of $ from employees in denial or fear about dealing w/ #mentalhealth issues
• maybe we should call out employers who stigmatize employees with #mentalhealth problems.
• i wouldn’t want to work for an employer that had a problem that i openly talk about #mentalhealth

Stigma

• labels are neutral. can be used for good ie find diagnosis, treatment, resources or for harm ie stigmatizers
• calling out stigmatizers is not just for you but for others too afraid to call stigmatizers out
• there can be stigma attached to talking openly about mental health but sometimes you also find unexpected support.
• One thing I have noticed lately is that when one opens up on Twitter about struggles, there can be a stigma attached.

Misinformation

• we should remember that misinformation is also a problem outside of social media and the internet
• Is misinformation a “big” problem regarding #mentalhealth and social media?
• around the topic of #ADHD the ignorance & stigma on social media esp twitter far outweighs the facts

Therapy

• therapy and social media – maybe social media will change therapy the way it has other ways of communication?
• Perhaps it can…even in subtle ways… e.g. homework: blog about so and so this week

A few links for your reading pleasure and edification:

Depression is often undertreated – an article in The Wall Street Jounral (Studies: Mental Ills Are Often Overtreated, Undertreated) – a study by Hector Gonzalez et al, published by the Archives of General Psychiatry. Gonzalez is an assistant professor of family medicine, public health and gerontology at Wayne State University in Detroit.

The Path of the Sacred Clown. Often people diagnosed with mental illness have pronounced spiritual experiences. Perhaps some of this article will resonate.

Finally, here is a candid discussion about alcohol and art.

Click here for a guest post by The Barking Unicorn on Isabella’s blog about why people don’t talk about mental illness, using the perhaps a bit controversial term of “nuttiness”.