When it comes to obtaining mental health treatment in this country there aren’t really any organizations that specialize in anything beyond the most absolute archaic attitudes towards mental health.
The usual attitudes that the “experts” espouse are:
- You’re faking this / being overly dramatic.
- You can’t be mentally ill if you’re working.
- If your family / relatives / significant others don’t voice concerns about you then you really can’t be suffering.
- If you don’t get better it’s because you’re faking this for attention
- If you don’t consent to taking brain altering drugs, you’re not serious about getting better.
- If you don’t participate in meaningless hippy-trippy feel good therapy then you’re just a self-centred asshole that cares nothing about those around you.
- If you don’t allow yourself to be committed for in-patient treatment and lose your employment and your ability to obtain security clearances then are you really committed to getting better.
- Depression isn’t a real disease and can be cured by smiling more and pretending to be happy.
I had been a supporter of the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health CAMH in Toronto prior to the Senate hearing for M.A.i.D. for Mental Illness when I was absolutely sickened and blindsided by their outright refusal to endorse Medical Assistance in Dying for circumstance in when metal illnesses such as depression were too much for the person requesting M.A.i.D. to endure.
Sadly it looks as if CAMH is more concerned with getting all of those prescriptions filled and all of their beds filled.
There have been some rather shocking criticisms against CAMH.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centre_for_Addiction_and_Mental_Health#Criticisms
All mental health treatment / therapy programs are like this. Nothing but 100% feel good bullshit designed in such a way that they are never at fault if their patients don’t get better.
And it’s not like I haven’t tried to get help before.
However one problem with mental health professionals is that they let their preconceived notions get in the way of seeing the patient before them.
It’s very hard to get treatment when “professionals” are dismissive of what you’re telling them.
- Children never lived on Canadian Armed Forces bases
- Why would civilians live on military bases?
- Children were never sexually abused on military bases
- Sexually abused children were never looked after by military social workers
- The Canadian Armed Forces never interfered with the mental health treatments of children.
- The Canadian Armed Forces never facilitated the postings of serving parents from one province to another province to avoid the apprehension of their children by provincial social services.
When dealing with counsellors and therapists in the past it was always assumed that if something as horrific as I had implied had happened that my father or other authority figures would have seen to it that I received treatment for my issues.
What these counsellors and therapists refused to believe was that the people who should have helped me were instead more interested in keeping my need for help a complete secret so as to keep the events on CFB Namao out of the media.
The Canadian Armed Forces and the chain of command made decisions that my mental health meant nothing compared to the public image of the Canadian Armed Forces.
And now I have to deal with organization such as CAMH that believe that all mental health issues can be medicated away and therefore M.A.i.D. for mental illness should never be allowed.
Beeshive 