05/15/2022
thank you for putting this together. This crew - we have all been friends for more than half our lives and together we honoured our dear friend Daniel- mainly known as The Horn. Horn lost his battle with end stage depression almost 10 years ago.
Like many others who lose this battle, their illness is no different than palliative cancer of an organ. Mental illness can become palliative too, like terminal cancer of the mind. Just like cancer can limit one’s ability to walk or talk, terminal mental illness can limit one’s ability to seek help or make healthy choices or lifestyle changes that would lead towards recovery.
This isn’t a choice. People do the best they can with the internal coping resources they have available to them at any given time, so to question irrational choices would be missing the fact that ALL illness places barriers to functioning - physically, socially, cognitively and otherwise.
When we face terminal cancer we typically don’t question what could be done differently - behaviourally or treatment wise.
When we talk about “mental health as health,” we truly need to understand what this means.
It means that grief is grief and illness is illness no matter which organ is impacted. Regardless of how we lose someone we love, by accident or illness, the type of illness should not dictate the support offered to those grieving.
As a grief and trauma therapist I often meet grieving families who identify their grief differently based on the type of illness. However, if we start to view mental illness as illness and serious mental illness as palliative or terminal, we may be able to break the stigma and change the narrative with information and understanding and truly support everyone struggling with this very complex and prevalent issue.
Horn- REST PEACEFULLY. sending love always.
