Category Archives: Mental Health

Consider, Media, Mental Health, Politics, Provincial

FINALLY – Something to Vote FOR.

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FINALLY – Something to Vote FOR.

Hearing that Abbotsford city Councillor Moe Gill was going to run as an independent in Abbotsford West was a Yabadabadoo moment for me.

Finally an opportunity to look forward to election day and casting my ballot for something (or someone), instead of needing to hold my nose and vote in a manner I judged would cause the least damage to the province, the economy, and to society.

When people ask who I am voting for I get to tell them straight out “I am voting FOR Moe Gill”, instead of having to say something like “I am voting for a minority government”’ or “I am trying to decide who is the lesser evil”.

Upon hearing I am voting for Moe Gill, many feel it necessary to state that, without being a member of a political party that can form the government, Mr. Gill cannot accomplish anything.

I like to begin my reply by pointing out they were just complaining that MLAs do what the party tells them and ignore the concerns and opinions of the people who elected them.

Moving on to remind them of their complaint about having to decide which party is the least objectionable. I opine that when you are forced to vote for the lesser of two evils, you are being forced to vote for an evil.

I then note the reality that there are many topics that political parties will not talk about and if forced to address, respond with platitudes; the reality that political parties are avoiding even talking about, much less addressing, important issues because the public does not want to hear about these issues – leaving these problems to grow until they reach a size where they ‘self correct’ with painful negative consequences; that political parties, mired in their ideologies, have no real understanding of the economic reality in BC or the financial situation most British Columbians are faced with as evidenced by the current election campaign; and, as evidenced by the current election campaign, none of the political parties has any new ideas about how to steer the ship of state through these turbulent times – without wrecking on one of the issues they pretend (BLEEP! I hope they are pretending) doesn’t exist or whose existence they ignore.

I remind my audience that for several years I have been writing about how we cannot afford the consequences that our current politicians and parties, with their ‘politics as usual’ behaviour, are bringing about and allowing to grow. That in order to avoid the painful consequences that ‘politics as usual’ is building up, we need to dislodge the entrenched political interests and get MLA’s who will tackle the important issues, even if the public does not want to hear about these issues – before the issues and consequences blow up in our faces.

I remind people that, although politicians have evolved a system that forces many Canadians to vote for the lesser of evils instead of for or on issues, we still have the right to vote for anyone we choose to. Calling on people to encourage independents to run for office – and for people to get out, support and vote for any suitable independents. Having written for several years about the need for independent candidates to run for office……when Moe Gill tosses his hat in the ring as an independent, I will be following my own call to action and voting for the independent candidate running in my riding – Mr. Moe Gill.

Independent candidates need issues to address but are not muzzled by a party, permitting them to address issues important to the future of the province and citizens, as well as issues important to their constituents.

Independent candidates can give a voice to those persons and issues the political parties do not wish to hear about or address.

I have watched the deterioration of Mental Health services in our health region, watched as the lack of resources and services have resulted in the death of people and the growing number of citizens who are turned away – until their mental health deteriorates to a point they are dangerous to themselves and the public.

I have watched a system that keeps doing the same thing over and over for those struggling with substance use problems, even though the outcome has an unacceptably abysmal ‘success’ (less than 5%) rate and we know that best practices elsewhere have significantly higher (90%) positive outcomes, in the apparent belief that if you do the same thing over often enough at some point you will get a different outcome.

I have watched things continue to worsen because of the lack of a voice that can effectively raise the issue.

I attended Moe Gill’s press conference and statement about the need to address mental health issues and later heard from people who had heard media reports about Moe Gill calling upon government to address mental health issues and failures.

Yes an Independent does not belong to a party that can form the government.

But Independents can effectively raise issues; raise issues the government and its MLAs want to avoid for political reasons; need to represent their constituents and are not hampered in this be party decisions or interests of the party deemed more important than the interests of citizens; one Independent can change the conversation, the election of several Independents can change the agenda.

We can no longer afford ‘politics as usual’ and the painful negative consequences ‘politics as usual’ leads to.

We need, we must, change. We need to take back our government in order to get good governance.

Which is why I will be voting FOR Moe Gill, encouraging other residents of West Abbotsford to vote for Moe Gill, and encouraging those with independents (OK, non-wacko independents) to support the independent in their riding

Love the sound of that – voting FOR something.

I am voting FOR something, I am casting my vote For our independent candidate in Abbotsford West, voting FOR Moe Gill.

Consider, Finances, Life, Mental Health

Car Trouble – It Came to Pass that…

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My friend Tom came by this Sunday morning to take a look at the beast aka my car and decided the pictures I sent of the leak and the part it was leaking out of was accurate and my water pump was shot.

We filled the radiator with all the water it would hold and I hopped in the car and….. noticed that I had left the glove compartment open when I retrieved something from it the previous evening.

Being an old hand at dealing with the Universe’s efforts to get me, I keep a set of jumper cables in the trunk to discourage the Universe from trying to get me with a dead battery. A quick jump and I was racing off to Tom’s although it turned out not to require to much haste as the coolness of the weather allowed me to drive to Tom’s place without the engine getting more than barely warm .

For a while it looked like the Universe was going to be successful in getting me. Everything came apart with relative ease until the pulley that was the last barrier to removing and replacing the water pump, refused to be removed. Even after being blasted by butane torch.

Plan B required removing the alternator to get at and remove the plate blocking access to the last two bolts holding the water pump in place. Two of the three bolts that needed to be removed to remove the plate were awkward, the third was damn awkward.

The first two were removed and the third, obviously one of the Universe’s minions, refused to budge. With the difficulty in getting at the bolt it appeared it was going to be successful in thwarting replacement of the water pump.

However, the bolt and the Universe had vastly underestimated Tom. With the refusal to budge they had challenged Tom, not defeated him. So, girding his loins for battle Tom plunged back into the fray with single minded determination and………emerged victorious.

The bolt was removed and the old water pump freed.

Tom commented that he had never seen a water pump in as bad shape as this one was, with the pulley shaft flopping around through a wide range of motion. Apparently I had been driving on borrowed time for some time, with the cool weather serving to allow the engine to avoid overheating. When the bearings finally shifted enough to uncover the weep hole the water escaped, informing me I needed a new water pump.

Fate had been kind, having the weep hole open up as I was on Highway 1 nearing Clearbrook rather than in Surrey.

Tom called and spoke to someone he knew working at an auto parts store, arranging for me to pick up a new water pump.

On my way back with the pump I made a quick stop at the library to pick up the items waiting for me on the ‘hold’ shelf, including the DVD of the new Bond movie. Aaahhhhhhh, relief. After 5 consecutive days of being unable to visit the library or retrieve my holds I had feared I was slipping into withdrawal.

It only took a few minutes but added to the time being polite and observing good line etiquette at the store required the elapsed time had my phone ringing while I was still a few blocks from Tom’s. After pulling up and parking I checked my phone and it had indeed been Tom, wondering if I had been lost as he had applied the gasket cement and was anxious to have the gasket to put in place as soon as possible.

I didn’t check the phone until the vehicle was stopped because I strongly support paying attention to your driving. Not only with regard to handheld electronic devices but eating, applying makeup, doing paperwork and all the other myriad of ways humans find to distract themselves from their driving. If you think about it, the statistics on the use of handheld devices are frightening in light of the implications those statistics hold about the number of distracted drivers, their victims and accidents causing serious injury and death.

This plague of ‘I HAVE to take this’ is another aspect of the narcissism, the ‘it is all about me’, the ‘screw others’ that has infected Canada and Canadians. I would support adding confiscation of the device to the fines, since the fines don’t seem to have gotten people’s attention, although I think the confiscation should be permanent, not temporary.

Following that word from our sponsors common sense, courtesy and consideration for others, we return to our tale of Universe intrigue.

Opening the box containing the new water pump (the correct pump, human expertise defeating any machinations by the Universe to deliver the wrong pump into my hands) the gasket was removed and placed in position. The pump was removed from its sealed bag, lined up and the last bolts removed to remove the old pump became the first bolts put in place to begin installation of the replacement pump.

And so it went, installing the new pump by replacing the bolts and assorted parts (such as the alternator) in the reverse order in which they were originally removed.

Not surprisingly the installation reassembly proceeded much smoother than the disassembly removal had. Although reinstalling the belt was trickier that removing the belt had been, mainly as a result of the difficulty in getting enough slack from the belt tension mechanism to get the belt over the alternator pulley.

Until the last bolt, that had been there moments before when the reinstallation of the fan housing and the fan blades had begun, pulled a disappearing act. We sought it here, we sought it there, we looked high, we looked low But nowhere was it to be found.

The last piece of the reassembly was missing! It looked as though the Universe was going to get its last laugh and that I would need to visit an auto wrecker to find a replacement bolt and return to Tom’s later in the week to complete the final item of the installation of the replacement pump.

So we abandoned the search for the last bolt and proceeded to fill the cooling system with coolant and start up the engine. After letting the engine run for several minutes it was turned off and the radiator was topped off.

As he was topping off the radiator what should Tom’s eye spot but the last bolt hiding down among the engine parts. Grabbing his telescoping magnet tipped doohickey for retrieving bolts etc Tom plucked the bolt from its hiding place and quickly installed it.

Mission accomplished! Water pump replacement procured and secured in place.

But before i could leave Tom disappeared back to his collection of nuts, bolts, screws etc; returning with what appeared to be two wood screws. “Grab your front plate” he instructed, having noticed that I had lost the front licence plate holder but still had the front plate which was sitting in the front window. That’s the good thing about plastic bumpers he informed me as he proceeded to screw the front plate into position with the wood screws.

I was ready to hit the road………..after borrowing Tom’s battery charger to fully charge up the battery. Lest the Universe be tempted to use a dead battery on the morrow to leave me scrambling to get to my appointment at mental health and to the shelter to do intake.

After all, you’re not paranoid is the Universe really is out to get you.

Addiction, behaviour, Consider, Life, Mental Health, Municipal, Provincial

Shaminder

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I knew Shaminder Brar for close to a decade, starting at a point where I was homeless and on the streets of Abbotsford as a result of my own mental illness.

And while hearing of Shaminder’s death by hit and run, be it accidental or otherwise, did evoke a feeling of deep sadness, the feeling I most associate with thoughts and memories of Shaminder is pain.

Seeing the pain mental illness, self-medication through drug (legal and illegal) abuse and being a pretty young woman with an addiction inflicted on Shaminder, being witness to the slow striping away of Shaminder’s dignity and seeing her reduced to a husk, to the animal humans are at our most basic level……….was painful.

Painful not in the way of “breaking my leg was painful’, but painful in the sense of having a tiny piece of one’s humanity ripped away

I once spent close to four hours sitting in a small room in emergency at the old hospital with Shaminder and someone who, seeing the level of distress and pain Shaminder was in on that day, insisted on taking her to the hospital and press-ganged me into accomplishing this.

Four hours because that is how long it took emergency to find someone to help Shaminder and if we had not stayed with her, Shaminder would not have stayed either. More damning than the four hour wait was that even had Shaminder been capable of getting herself to the emergency ward at the hospital it is probable the behaviour and attitude of the staff would have sent her fleeing. It took the body language and attitude ‘you will provide help to this young woman or I will remove your head and get the help she needs from your replacement’ to motivate the staff.

During Fraser Health’s current fiscal year I have lost two people to suicide, and nearly lost a third, as a direct result of the rationing of mental health and substance use imposed by budget constraints.

So jumping on the “she was as much a casualty of the health care system as she was victim of any car accident” bandwagon is tempting.

I will not take the easy way out and jump on the bandwagon because it ignores the numerous other important factors that contributed to Shaminder’s Fate and, perhaps most importantly, it would be a terrible disservice to all the ‘Shaminders’ who remain in desperate need of help.

It is very easy to attack mental health because in matters like this their hands are literally tied behind them by privacy issues. The most that mental health can say is simply that there is a great deal of information and detail that the public is unaware of and will remain unaware of because of privacy laws.

I am in no way trying to absolve mental health and the Health Care system. They bear a share, perhaps the lions share, of responsibility for what aid Shaminder did not – and did – receive. But mental health does not bear sole responsibility. Responsibility for Shaminder’s Fate is shared widely and if our only reaction is to find someone to pin the blame on we are abandoning all those in similar circumstances as Shaminder was abandoned.

Although I in no way want to contribute to their pain, I could take some of the statements Shaminder made about her family, add in the psycho/social/bio realities of being human, mix in some rumour/innuendo and accuse Shaminder’s family of abandoning her to her mental illness, addiction and the streets of Abbotsford.

Or focus on the fact that while the Warm Zone helped keep Shaminder alive, it could be painted as enabling Shaminder and failing to build the bonds that would have helped Shaminder make healthier choices. One must not leave out all the other agencies and organizations whose stated purpose is to help those like Shaminder;  agencies and organizations that required Shaminder change to suit their needs rather than being flexible enough to adapt to Shaminder in order to meet her needs and that either enabled or failed to establish the needed working relationship – or both.

And if we are pointing fingers at government agencies that are charged with helping people who need help, where were social services during these years?

Then there was the Health Minister (now Finance Minister) Mike de Jong and the governing Liberal party, who for crass political reasons avoid addressing the growing problems/issues that are causing increasing failures of the healthcare system to deliver adequate healthcare.

These issues and problems threaten the nature and future of the healthcare system, but because addressing these issues and problems would involve telling voters unpleasant realities they do not want to hear – which voters punish by voting for the opposition – none of the current political parties has the leadership, intestinal fortitude, integrity or principles to act in the best interests of the citizens of BC rather than the (short term) best interests of the politicians of BC.

And then there is the major obstacle that Abbotsford City Council is to the homeless seeking to recover their lives. An obstacle that not only played a major part in this tragedy, but bears a major responsibility for additional lives lost over the years and will bear responsibility for lives lost in the future as a result of their behaviours.

It is a part that grows as the City steps up their harassment of the powerless, the homeless, social misfits and all those who not only will not conveniently disappear, but insist on resurfacing time after time after time after time…….

Without housing to act as a stable base, a foundation upon which to reclaim and rebuild her life, what chance did Shaminder have?

They speak of the homeless as failing to be ‘medication compliant’, but how can you be medication compliant when even the questionable stability of a camp as a place to have shelter from the elements, to sleep and to leave one’s meagre belongings is denied by a City Council that hunts you down and turns you out onto the streets of Abbotsford at the same time their actions deny housing for the hard to house?

Would being ‘medication compliant’ or keeping appointments be at the top of your ‘To Do’ list when you have no idea where you will sleep tonight, much less tomorrow or the day after tomorrow?

Survival topped my list. If I wasn’t so stubborn, a stubborness enhanced by Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, Recovery and Wellness would not have remained on my ‘To Do’ list. And even when they remained on my ‘To Do’ list, it was only the good fortune to have a PDA (a Sony Clié) into which I could enter where and why I needed to be and set it to make sure I was reminded and had enough time to get where I needed to go……..

I have shared my “Theory of PDA Recovery” with various Case Managers at Mental Health, who acknowledge how useful a PDA would be to the homeless in making it to their appointments, taking their medications etc.

Stable, supportive housing can supply reminders and help in following the unique path that each person seeking Recovery and Wellness must find and follow.

There are solid reasons that the American Psychiatric Association recognizes ‘Housing First’ as an approach, perhaps the best approach, to helping the street entrenched homeless, the mentally ill, those abusing drugs (alcohol, prescription, the free enterprise street drugs) find their way to Recovery and Wellness.

Experience has demonstrated that, as counterintuitive as it may be, providing housing helps people to seek Recovery and Wellness quicker and provides support – a vital ingredient in finding Recovery and Wellness. Although given that human beings are involved, nothing should really be a surprise.

There are multiple targets to point fingers at and shout “J’ accuse”.

We have become a culture needing to find someone to blame and demonstrate our innocence, our lack of responsibility for the matter.

We seek someone to blame, make excuses, make it someone else’s fault and absolve ourselves of responsibility for causing The Matter – and perhaps for resolving the Matter?

Like the other major issues we seek to wilfully deny, avoid taking responsibility for correcting, do not want to hear or think about, want neat, easy, fast solutions………there is plenty of responsibility to go around among us all.

Society, the government is us. We have built the society we live in through our actions; we have gotten the government we deserve as a result of our actions.

Take a look around at ‘best practices’ for dealing with homelessness, mental illness and misuse of drugs of all stripes. We could make impressive progress in addressing these and other challenges we face today – if we where to choose to and if we were willing to make the commitments and do what is necessary.

But while we will complain, complain, complain……. we have become a province, a country, a society that seeks somebody to blame rather than accept responsibility for acting to correct what needs correction; a province, a country, a society that is unwilling to make any effort or sacrifice to address the growing number of issues that need our attention, decisions made and actions taken; that chooses not to see that the route to our wellness and prosperity requires that we renounce greed.

Insanity: doing the same thing over and over and over and over…..expecting a different outcome.

If we want outcomes different from those we are getting now, our actions and behaviours have to change.

To change our actions and behaviours we need to change ourselves.

We need leadership that, rather than encouraging the worst in us (for their personal benefit), challenges us to be the best we can be. We need New leadership that is not about racing to the bottom, but about struggling to the top.

We need to stop taking the path of less resistance, the easy way out and accepting the Lowest Common Denominator; we need to demand and strive for excellence from ourselves.

Rather than wilful denial of issues we need to return to what Canadians have always done when faced with daunting issues – whatever is necessary to overcome the obstacles.

An old Cherokee chief was teaching his grandson about life…

“A fight Between two wolves is going on inside me,” he said to the boy.

“One is evil – he is anger, envy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, self-doubt, and ego.

“The other is good – he is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion, and faith.

“This same fight is going on inside you – and inside every other person, too.”

The grandson thought about it for a minute and then asked his grandfather, “Which wolf will win?”

The old chief simply replied, “The one you choose to feed.