It focuses predominantly on male, white, upper-middle class and able-bodied perspectives. If we’re going to actually talk about mental health in a productive way we need to diversify and broaden this scope to include everyone — especially since people from marginalized communities, such as LGBTQ or disabled folks, are more likely to experience significant mental health issues.

One characterization of mental health simply isn’t enough to achieve the campaign’s goal of “end[ing] the stigma surrounding mental illness.” As a person with a disability, I would like to share my struggles with mental health to help diversify this discussion. This is the first time I’ve written about my mental health challenges publicly.

Mental health on the backburner

When I was five years old I was adopted. I was taken from my birth parents due to their inability to look after me. I couldn’t eat solid food and had never had a haircut. I had sores on my body because I had never been bathed. To say that I experienced early childhood trauma would be an understatement.

Shortly after being adopted I was diagnosed with a degenerative neuromuscular disorder, Duchenne muscular dystrophy. Doctors didn’t think I’d live past the age of nine, but here I am in graduate school at the age of 25.

So much attention was paid towards my physical health, including appointments with cardiologists, respirologists and neurologists to name just a few, that my mental health was entirely put on the backburner. I wonder what my health would be like now if my mental health had been prioritized from the start.

Acknowledging depression

In 2014 I went through a human rights case that left me in a tailspin. For the first time in my life I started having suicidal thoughts. After much deliberation, I sought out the support of a counsellor. For me, the hardest part was admitting that I needed help. I had always been taught not to discuss my emotions and to internalize how I was feeling. I had to teach myself to find a way to let my emotions and feelings out, to speak up, and to find courage in doing so. I was privileged to have the supports and services available to me to do so.

While I chose to seek help, I still remained in denial. I was afraid to acknowledge that I had depression. After some familial struggles over the summer, I became chronically depressed over the fall to the point that even though I have two full-ride scholarships at Simon Fraser University, the prospect of doing my coursework for my master’s degree became unbearable. It felt like I had a debilitating weight on my shoulders and I was being hammered with negative thoughts, which I started to believe were true. I couldn’t function.

Thanks to the encouragement of my fiancée, I sought the help of a doctor and I’ve since been prescribed a selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor to manage my depression. SSRIs have also been proven to help manage the general symptoms of muscular dystrophy, so I’m all around healthier for it. With my mental health in check, I can now keep doing what I love, continuing to advocate for people with disabilities.

Disabilities and mental health

People with disabilities remain absent from narratives of mental health due to the way the responsibility of health issues is still commonly believed to belong to the individual.

If the disabled were included in perspectives of mental health, we would need to collectively acknowledge that the social experience, such as the isolation and poverty frequently faced by the marginalized, influences mental health. As it stands, excluding the social experience excludes the disenfranchised.

According to the B.C. Ministry of Health Chronic Disease Registries, in 2014-2015 roughly seven out of 100 people experienced episodic depression and anxiety in B.C. I hope that sharing my story will help someone to find the courage they need to seek support for their own mental health.

While the Bell Let’s Talk campaign works hard to destigmatize mental illness, it can only fully do so if more diverse perspectives like mine are encompassed within it. So let’s talk about it.

Luke Galvani is an MA student at Simon Fraser University’s School of Communication who is passionate about disability and social justice issues.