Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Today we’re going to do a little bit of a theme day on mental illness. When I think of mental illness, I think of anxiety, depression, bipolar, schizophrenia and addictions.
Some come and go, some are lifelong, some will respond well to medication and some others not so well. Some result from a hereditary predisposition and some are less likely to be hereditary, but all mental illness deserves the same response as any other physical illness. To that end, I think our resources through the Department of Health and Social Services and this government are stretched very, very thin.
The statistics on the percentage of people who will struggle with some degree of mental illness in their lifetime is staggering. So as a very first starting point, we have to first abolish and banish the stigma, and we need to think through a lens of medical science and a common sense approach to responding to mental illness.
To that end, I will use myself as an example. Stress, extreme stress, can trigger bouts of depression and anxiety. When I was 26 years old, within a six-month period my husband lost his job, we had to move into an unfinished house, we had a baby, the baby turned out to be a very sick baby, and my mother was diagnosed with terminal cancer and died. That was in a six-month period when I was 26 years old. Probably also mixed in with some post-partum depression, I hit rock bottom. After many trips to the emergency ward at the hospital, I had a choice between trying to work through it through my faith or take medication. Taking medication to me seemed counterintuitive because I always wanted to be in control, and taking medication made me think that I wasn’t going to be in control of how I felt.
I only tell this story to the end that people might look at me and think, there’s Jane Groenewegen. Now, she has never had a worry in this world. I mean, they look at me and say, you’ve been married for 38 years, you have had a couple of successes, you’ve been in politics for 20 years, there’s a person who’s got it all together. Mr. Speaker, that’s not how we need to look at mental illness. We need to understand that these incidents and stints of mental illness will occur. Some will last an entire lifetime. Some people will get help. That is where we, the government, need to think outside the box.
Mr. Speaker, I’d like to seek unanimous consent to conclude my statement. Thank you.
---Unanimous consent granted
My colleagues are telling me to slow down. Obviously this is something that I’m very passionate about, as you can tell.
We need to think outside of the box. As I said, when I found myself in that situation, the only thing that saved me in a small, northern town was a lady that I knew that stayed home all day and baked and watched soap operas. Now, she didn’t talk a lot and she wasn’t a lot of help to me, but she was there. Because I was afraid to go in. I was afraid to stay home. I didn’t know where to go. My husband had to go to work because he had a job. These are the kinds of pressures that people are faced with.
So when I say “think outside the box,” I think we need to do more with the idea of having people in all of our communities who are there to be a support with people who are struggling. People who can receive training on helping people and sometimes just to be there and help people and support people through these things. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mrs. Groenewegen. Member for Range Lake, Mr. Dolynny.
