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Changing views of mental illness: banishing the Verdun mentality

The Globe and Mail Editor, Ed Greenspon, on how his view of mental illness has changed

When I was a young boy growing up in Montreal, I would hear adults sometimes speaking about a place called Verdun. I sort of knew that Verdun was a neighbourhood of Montreal, like my own. But their references were darker. They made it sound like a hell on earth.

Even through the confused state of the young mind, I was able to discern that Verdun was a place where people unlike us, people with a screw loose, people who posed a danger to themselves or, shudder, a danger to others, were contained. I imagined a medieval dungeon. Indeed, the distinction between hospital and prison did not register for me.

What I knew was that I never wanted to be sent to Verdun, or even go near it. Such was the powerful stigma of mental illness nurtured in this child’s imagination.

These memories came flooding back this fall when CAMH’s Dr. David Goldbloom and Dr. Paul Garfinkel took Cathrin Bradbury, the editor in charge of The Globe's Breakdown series, and me on a tour of the former Queen Street mental health facility—now the Center for Addiction and Mental Health—in Toronto. We were told how its address, 999 Queen Street West, became so imbued with notoriety in the public mind over the years that the government of Ontario finally changed the number. It is, of course, nothing more or less than a hospital, a place to care for the ill. But even a few moments on the premises make clear it is unlike others. Hospitals are not historically built with the grandeur of other public spaces, such as art museums or legislatures. But even by the low design standards of the health care world, the Queen Street facility has the compassion of loony bin written throughout. And then there are the poor patients. Our tour guides told us that about 60 per cent never receive a visitor. It’s like something out of a Robertson Davies novel, except this is 2008.

Life is a journey through which we hopefully progress more than we regress. In my case, as it relates to an understanding of and sensitivity about mental illness, I would have to confess my journey has been uneven, although I hope I am moving in the right direction.

My first close-up exposure to mental illness occurred in university. I was what they called a Res Fellow, meaning that in exchange for free room and board I took responsibility for a floor in residence of about 60 students. I was trained to be alert to emotional distress, particularly among those away from home for the first time.

But I didn’t spot the demons weighing down Kevin, one of the most popular people on the floor. Kevin was the life of the party, not in a loud or boisterous way, but by virtue of his subtle charm and caustic wit. It would take some time for those of us who grew close to him to realize that he was suffering from severe depression. I lived with him off campus one summer. By then, he had attempted suicide at least a couple of times and could barely function.

I’m not an expert on the causes of depression. But years later, I would come to understand that Kevin, a devout and conservative Catholic, was fighting a losing battle trying to suppress his homosexuality. When he finally accepted himself as gay, his life seemed to turn around, although, sadly, he died from complications of AIDS in the mid-1980s. His parents, unable to cope with his sexuality, refused to take his body back to Thunder Bay for burial. Kevin’s short life was replete with stigma.

In adult life, I came to know an amazing child named Alyse, now also known to readers of The Globe and Mail’s Breakdown series as well as to CAMH staff and volunteers who recognized her incredible spirit with the 2007 Courage to Come Back Award. Alyse, who has been best friends with my daughter Bailey since grade two, is the most impressive kid I’ve ever met—gifted in myriad ways yet afflicted by an obsessive-compulsive disorder so profound that it takes practically all of her willpower just to emerge from the bedroom in the morning. When Bailey started university this fall, Alyse was not, as they once dreamed, able to join her.

What makes Alyse so special, and gives me hope for the progress of all of us, is that she knows not of stigma. She has risen above it. That separates her from Kevin’s experience a quarter-century earlier.

When The Globe and Mail decided last year to shine a light on mental health issues, we were astounded by the reaction. It was as if our readers, and there are several million of them in print and on-line, were simply waiting for permission to openly discuss these matters that so obviously touched their families, schools or workplaces. I suspect Canadians want to bring mental illness out from the cellar. They want to erase the stigma. They are simply looking for leadership.

Fear and ignorance thrive in darkness. Prejudices picked up in childhood die hard. But new leadership, equipped with the will and skill to communicate openly, is emerging. I see it through the successes of CAMH, through the efforts of Michael Kirby at the Canadian Mental Health Commission, through the newfound willingness of prominent Canadians to speak publicly about their personal struggles or those of their loved ones.

For the sake of the Kevins and Alyses of the world, let’s all make the effort to finally banish the Verdun mentality and treat mental illness like any other health issue.

For a PDF of the December 2008 issue of LIGHT, click here.