Let’s talk about human rights.
While public transit advertisements of Howie Mandel posing for the media conglomerate spreads throughout the nation, it carries the brand far and inside the minds of people who think they can “make a difference” by texting.
But somewhere, a person is still feeling the effects of crime bill C-10, one of the biggest pieces of crime legislation to be implemented in our nation’s history, marginalizing and criminalizing “mental illness,” in ways to which the public still remain clueless.
Stef Mendolia, a graduate student in critical disability studies, echoes this sentiment in her assessment of Bell Let’s Talk, stating, “Let’s think critically about mental health before we talk, or encourage people to talk. Let’s listen to the marginalized voices that are overshadowed by this campaign.”
Mendolia worked on a report this past summer, “Clearing a Path: A Psychiatric Survivor Anti-Violence Framework,” with the Psychiatric Disabilities Anti-Violence Coalition. The report was made possible by the City of Toronto’s Access, Equity and Human Rights community grant.
“Clearing a Path” presents a psychiatric survivor framework groups can use to engage in a response to violence against people with psychiatric disabilities in their communities. The history of the psychiatric survivor movement has been defined by members’ struggle for freedom from violence, the report reads.
York Professor of critical disability studies, Geoffrey Reaume, defined the word “survivor” as a means to communicate pride in the history of people surviving discrimination and abuse inside and outside of the psychiatric system, albeit directly or structurally.
“In advocating for our rights and in our personal and collective accomplishments – that psychiatric survivors are much more than a diagnostic label,” Reaume writes.
Mendolia, who has worked as a peer support worker and advocate in the community, thinks there is something fundamentally wrong with a top-down treatment model.
During one of her peer mentorship training sessions, a mental health professional was writing on a whiteboard, asking what peers-in-training thought were some of the challenges the population they were serving would encounter.
Mendolia explains, “I said something like prejudice, discrimination, and structural violence, and they wrote on the board ‘stigma.’”
“And I’ll never forget that experience because [it represents the problem with] mental health awareness as a whole. When we talk about, or reduce things to ‘stigma,’ we’re erasing [the seriousness of what is happening around us].”
Mendolia is critical of how the public may understand diagnosis, or The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, the psychiatric bible also known as the “DSM,” which subsequently releases new editions every few years, creating and eliminating old and new mental illnesses. For instance, there was a time when the DSM considered homosexuality a “mental illness.”
However, times have changed.
“Many people don’t understand how a diagnosis is made and they think it’s hard science,” says Mendolia.
“There are some people who find having a diagnosis helpful, which is great, but we need to acknowledge the broader structure in how diagnosis’ are utilized in our health care system from a capitalist model. We need to situate Bell Let’s Talk Day in that context.”
Mendolia wants Bell Let’s Talk to be transparent about where the money is going, asking questions such as, is it going to consumer and survivor-run organizations?
“We need to know percentages,” she says. “We need to know dollars and cents because a lot of the health care dollars are already going to [hospitals]. It is really all about money generated at the end of the day. Let’s talk about being accountable and transparent. We’re all being mobilized into texting each other, rather than asking these important questions.”
Service-users have been organizing for years, as far back as the creation of asylums, to improve conditions for patients. The consumer-survivor-ex-patient movement has stemmed from this long history, as well as individuals who supported one another during the 1970s, in the period of deinstitutionalization.
“There were [patients] who were pushed out of the system and who got together to start supporting one another, and through that they developed peer support, advocacy, and self-help networks,” says Mendolia, who explains how the psychiatric survivor movement was built on values such as self-determination and autonomy.
Moreover, this movement led to the development of patient counsels across Ontario. Today, there is still an ongoing fight for not only representation in organizations by people with lived experience, but also a fight against representation that is “tokenistic,” which is deeply patronizing.
“We can’t know what meaningful engagement for service-users is in Toronto’s mental health system because we haven’t experienced it yet,” Mendolia says. “When we do then maybe we will be able to explain exactly how tokenistic the current model is along with the recent innovations to counteract the history of tokenism.”
It has yet to be seen if the newly elected Trudeau government will amend any of the costly measures implemented by the Harper government with respect to crime bill C-10, a bill the Republican state of Texas said was moving Canada in the wrong direction and laying the seeds to a state of incarceration.
“The times have changed, and my call is for all of us as critical thinkers to really consider what we should be focusing our activism and social justice work on in regards to mental health,” says Mendolia.
In recent weeks, some people have taken issue with York’s new policy on accommodations, particularly the Toronto Star’s Heather Mallick, who claimed the human rights decision was “taking a step back,” and naively asking, “why keep mental disability a secret?”
Sheryl Boswell, Youth Mental Health in Education Action Group, sent an article to Mallick entitled, “What part of DISability do you not understand?” Boswell says, “not only was Mallick’s article a shoddy piece of writing, but it relied on stereotypes, false information, faulty reasoning, and flippant remarks. We expect better.”
“Comments made by Mallick in her article in the Toronto Star demonstrate so clearly the work that must be done to combat ignorance and discrimination in every aspect of life, including education,” she says.
“It takes courage to go against the system. We applaud Navi Dhanota and the decision by York University.”
Clearly Mallick is challenged by the use of “enlightened” language when referring to people with mental health challenges and disabilities, she adds, reiterating how the columnist grouped all people who live with a range of mental health disorders and illnesses as “the mentally ill.”
“Attributing blame to people with mental ill health for the silence and shame that has been the historic experience of those with physical illnesses of the brain, which continues to this day as a result of stigma and discrimination, denies the very real existence of discrimination in every facet of life. People with lived experience of mental ill health are not responsible for the discrimination that they experience on a daily basis in education, the workplace, and in society.”
Mallick suggests that “the York student just has to ask, and it must be given,” says Boswell. “This is just plain inaccuracy. Documentation from health care professionals based on a psychological, educational assessment that outlines diagnoses and recommendations for educational accommodations and supports is required for all students in order to use the accessibility office.”
On the basis of this documentation, staff in the three accessibility offices of York develop a list of educational accommodations to provide to professors. A diagnosis will not assist the professor in understanding how to support his or her students. Only the documentation provided by the accessibility office of educational accommodations can do this.
Mallick’s article suggests, if they can’t exist within the requirements of the university, “perhaps university is not for them.”
Mallick and many others would never suggest to a student with physical disabilities or invisible illnesses like cancer that university and institutions of higher learning cannot support their physical or learning differences, says Boswell.
Yet, she and many others feel that people with mental illness are fair game for offensive and discriminatory attitudes and beliefs, she adds. The Ontario Human Rights Code is the basis for all interactions involving staff and students.
“Discrimination based on disability is one of the grounds under the Human Rights Code. We have protection under the Human Rights Code for a reason. Mallick does not seem to understand the basis for the code and how its principles can be applied in all services, including education.”
To suggest that lived experience of mental health is a choice and an opportunity to scam educational institutions is to undermine the work that has been done.
The work to understand mental ill health and to combat stigma, discrimination, ignorance and to provide the supports and services necessary to people with disabilities in order to provide inclusive, respectful, and accessible education is considered a universal right.
Boswell argues, it is obvious from the article, “Why keep mental disability a secret?” that Mallick does not understand what the issues were and why not disclosing diagnoses to professors levels the playing field for many students.
“Although the win was through settlement, a very important fact demonstrating York’s understanding of disability issues and effort to support all students, it is not a national precedent,” says Boswell.
“It paves the way to assisting other educational institutions. However, if there are similar issues as the ones that Dhanota brought forward, they must be raised in a human rights complaint.”
Human rights is not a topic typically broached in corporate feel-good culture.
Mallick, among others who naively think Bell Let’s Talk is a genuine step forward, have not even broached the tip of the iceberg when it comes to mental health advocacy. And neither have the manipulated masses who think they’ve contributed to a solution by texting a media conglomerate’s hashtag, essentially offering free labour when the company could have otherwise hired promotional staff.
Ryan Moore, News Editor
Featured image courtesy of Bell Media
