Blog Archives
7 Months
I have been absent for a whole day but it’s felt like longer. I have been very busy and very tied.
Today is 7 months self harm free!!! WOOT!
As many of you know this past month has been particularly hard but I made it!
My reward is allowing myself to spend money on brunch with friends! The Madvocates are having their final meeting of 2012 
We’re going to The Senator!
I’m A Published Author!
On a happier note I am now a published academic author!
The journal article was written by The Madvocates!
Here’s a link to where you can download the PDF!
There is also an article about how Fat is a social work issues, that is written by one of my 3rd year social work professors!
An Open Forum On Mental Health
On Thursday September 13, 2012 the Ontario Human Rights Commission will be at Ryerson University presenting their Mental Health Consultation Report!
Minds that Matter: The OHRC’s Mental Health Consultation Report
Please join us for the release of the report on September 13, 2012 at 9:30 AM.
Place: Sears Atrium in the George Vari Engineering and Computing Center
Ryerson University
245 Church St. Toronto, Ontario
After my group, The Madvocates, will be holding an open forum discussing mental health issues on campus and the OHRC report!
The Madvocates
Location: 99 Gerrard St E, Sally Horsfall Eaton Centre (SHE building), Room 686
Time: 12pm-2pm
If you live in the area it would be great if you stopped by! All welcome!
How is Funding Like Unicorns?
Because you never seem to find it!
The Madvocates did not receive funding yet again. We have been trying for about 2 or 3 years or so to get funding to begin our research.
It’s very strange because the organizations tell us how amazing our project is and how it’s important but the money never seems to come.
How can support and praise lead to nothing?
Could it be sanism?! Not actually wanting to fund a project on mental health? It’s starting to look that way.
The Madvocates
I have been meaning to write this post since I first began Pride in Madness and I couldn’t tell you why it’s taken this long.
I have mentioned in previous posts and on “About Me” pages that I am a member of a mental health research/advocacy group called The Madvocates.
The Madvocates name is a combination of “Mad” and “Advocate” which was cleverly created by one of our former members.
The one major thing to know about us is we use the term “sanism” or sometimes “mentalism”. These terms mean, the discrimination of someone who has a real or perceived mental health issue. It’s along the same lines as racism, sexism, heterosexism, classism etc.
The Beginning
I was entering my third year of university at Ryerson (we’re fuzzy with our dates so I wont use any unless I know for sure) and I received a mass email from our social work “know-all” guy about a professor and her masters student researcher that needed 6 participants for a pilot project on social work students, who identified as having mental health issues or having experienced a mental health related issue, and how they feel the university (staff, students, professors etc) treated them. I instantly replied and the professor, J Poole, called me to fill me in on the study and set up an interview time.
I was interviewed by masters student, J Reid (who is now pursuing her Phd), about my experiences of mental health and the school. I felt a little useless throughout this interview because I realized that this school had never done anything to me because I had a mental health issue. I was open about the fact that I had one but it had never meant I had to pursue school supports and intervention of any kind.
The results of this pilot project showed that Mad social work students have difficulties in the school due to a lack of resources and discrimination/lack of understanding from the school community.
At the end of the interview I was given a $25 honorarium (Whoot!) and checked off the box that said “Yes, I would like to be involved in future opportunities with this project”. Which, in all honesty, I thought wouldn’t happen, at least not in the way it ended up!
The Birth of the Madvocates
Another email from J Poole, asking me if I would like to be a part of the next step in the research! I said yes!
We became a group of 7 women, all social work students/faculity/alumni and we were all Mad. We were peer researchers and peer supports to each other.
Our goal was to expand on the research the Poole and Reid began. We wanted to find out what how the social work student population felt about Mad students and then use that information (found by survey) to create interview questions to ask more Mad students about their experiences. We would then analyze the data and submit the final product for not only publication but to the university to help the create better supports for Mad students.
The only issue was, we needed money!
Submissions
We first submitted our research proposal to SSHRC (Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council). We had another more medical alternative (for which I forget the name) in case SSHRC deemed our research medical and not social (which is a problem). After waiting 
a few months we heard back from SSHRC. We had received a rating of 4A which meant they liked our proposal but they’re not going to fund us. We were confused as to how we could have received rave reviews from our peer reviewers but then not get any money.
We tried a second time and got the same results but one of our peer reviewers was clearly, well, an idiot. This reviewer felt we had no idea what we were talking about! Which is bullshit because we had been living and breathing this issue for a few years.
We still have ways of getting money and some should be coming our way soon so we can start the survey process which has now expanded to Ryerson’s Faculty of Community Services!
Presentations
Our first presentation, looking back, was a huge jump! Four of us, myself included, traveled to New York City to present “Cultural Legacy of Shame” at PsychOUT 2011. We had a small intimate group participate and throughout or presentation swapped stories with individuals from all sorts of backgrounds and experience but most were heavily involved in the Mad movement!
Our presentation was on how the long time shaming of people with mental health issues has bled into social work, a profession that prides itself on its dedication to social justice and empowerment. We shared stories of how mental health as a subject was ignored in 
class, of sanist situations occurring in class and what we want to happen for Ryerson social work and social work in general.
There was a lot of nodding while we spoke and at the end a woman, who was from the south judging by her accent, shared with us that social work has not changed, that mental health was treated the same when she went to school for social work years ago. This just showed me that this issue is bigger than we had thought.
Earlier in 2012 were were invited to present at the RyeACCESS conference (a school conference on disability). We were the only group to present on mental health. We presented on our research with questions for the audience to answer. We ended up skipping parts of our presentation because people wanted to answer the questions. This was amazing! We could tell that people were dying to talk about sanism and their experiences! It was like they had been holding their breath for a long time and were finally able to release it and breathe again. We were overwhelmed with the response.
Due to our successful presentation RyeACCESS is now going to create a separate mental health stream for the next conference they have!
This past week was Mad Pride Toronto and The Madvocates (I couldn’t attend I had to work) held a forum on Mad Social Work. We wanted to gather social workers, social work students, and community members to discuss the profession with a Mad context. What is 
Mad social work? What are the barriers in practicing Mad social work? how do we overcome these barriers? What do we want to do now?
I’m told 63 people attended and that the discussion was amazing! We are going to have a smaller forum again and I’m hoping to attend that one!
Publication
We have a research coming out at the end of this month/early August about our research which I will post a link for when I get it!
And so, that is The Madvocates. We are going places and doing this we never thought would happen. We’ve become more advocacy than we thought we would and it’s amazing. The Madvocates has benefited us as individuals in ways we never thought and many of us can’t believe this is happening!
I don’t know if I posted this in the past but here is a link to the Ryerson Alunmi Magazine that has The Madvocates mentioned in it! We are on page 17 near the end!
http://www.ryerson.ca/content/dam/alumni/magazine/winter12.pdf
We’re so excited to see where we end up!
Toronto Mad Pride
If you’re in the area come on by! Here’s the Mad Pride Toronto event page!
The Madvocates is my mental health group! Unfortunately due to work I will not be attending but please check us out of you can!
101 Things That Make Me Happy Part 3
101 Things That Make Me Happy
50. The Madvocates (my mental health research group)
51. YO Group (a peer support group I attend)
52. Black Roses
53. Cheesecake
54. Being Busy
55. The Virgin Suicides
56. Having My Feelings Validated
57. Supporting Others
58. Old Panic! At the Disco
59. Learning
60. Walking
61. My Laptop
62. Travelling (when I can)
63. Bass (music, not fish)
64. Having a Loving Partner
65. Seeing that My Relationship with My Family is the Best it’s Been!
66. My Friend’s Handmade Hair Clips
67. Drinks Where Your Don’t Notice the Alcohol
68. Bingo
69. This Number Makes Me Happy 
Can Mental Health Care Be Fixed?
Yet another great episode on TVO’s The Agenda with Steve Paikin! This one is about 30min in length and is talking about Canada’s first ever national mental health strategy!
Once again I had my say from the comfort of my couch via The Madvocates on Twitter!
How do I feel I’ve been let down by the system? I feel that I was not taken seriously, I feel that my psychiatrist was to quick to diagnose and medicate me, I feel my psychiatrist did not listen to me and he made me feel weak.
If you would like to check out the new strategy you can view it here: http://strategy.mentalhealthcommission.ca/pdf/strategy-images-en.pdf
It’s a great discussion and there is a lot of optimism for this new plan!
Video Description: The Mental Health Commission of Canada has announced its new strategy. Will it help those dealing with mental illness get the treatment they need?
Rainer Maria Rilke Quote
“Do not assume that she who seeks to comfort you now, lives untroubled among the simple and quiet words that sometimes do you good. Her life may also have much sadness and difficulty, that remains far beyond yours. Were it otherwise, she would never have been able to find these words.”- Rainer Maria Rilke
This quote was sent by a fellow Madvocate to the group. Everyone in the group has their issues, their experiences that have made life and sometimes living seem just too hard. We are still there for each other and appreciate each other’s journeys and the journeys that are too come. Without what we’ve gone through we wouldn’t be together. ♥
