Letters to the Editor

Winnipeg Free Press - PRINT EDITION

'Illiterates' block road to mental health recovery

Posted: 05/15/2012 1:00 AM | Comments: 0

DEAR EDITOR,

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Directing better and faster care for people struggling with various forms of mental illness is a necessity. I applaud the provincial government for its five-year mental health strategy -- as discussed by Lindor Reynolds in her May 12 article, A special kind of sad.

I too live with depression. I have experienced the very depths of despair as noted in the article. Fortunately, I was connected with Eden Health Care Services in Winkler and obtained the best possible mental health care one could ever experience.

So too, the region of Manitoba where I live, what used to be the North Eastman Health Assoc., has provided me with the best possible mental health worker who has a specialty of working with people, like me, who were sexually abused in their youth.

However, the road to recovery and healing is strewn not only with a lack of mental health resources, but often with persons totally illiterate on the subject of mental health -- those who destroy rather than assist persons with mental illness. I have been the subject of attempts by my former denomination to exorcise my demons, and to this day am considered by them to be demon-possessed, rather than living with depression.

Instead of receiving support, I am shunned because of the demons they think they see within me. Not once has that denomination offered to help walk with me in my depression, help my family, or even seek assistance for me. Instead, they spiritualize mental illness and condemn me for having the wrong kind of Christian faith.

However, I was pleased to read in the article that a church in Steinbach did help the person in the article get proper help. That is wonderful and quite unusual. But that is what churches should do.

It should be appropriate for persons living with mental illness to go to their places of worship to be directed to the best care possible. I did not experience that at all. Help for me came from compassionate professionals in my place of work.

KEN REDDIG

Pinawa

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition May 15, 2012 A11

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