On Why I Hate #BellLetsTalk (And Why I Do It Every Year)
It’s #BellLetsTalk tomorrow, and every year I go through a bit of a struggle. For a mental health advocate, someone who makes a living talking about mental health, this might seem weird. It feels weird to me. But there’s an icky feeling that I just can’t shake about #BellLetsTalk.
Partly, let’s start with the obvious. Bell is a company. Capitalism tells us that the company wouldn’t be doing this if it wasn’t the equivalent of one (1) metric shit ton of free advertising. But let’s skim past that for a second, because we’re supposed to be happy that a company is deigning to be charitable at all, and I’m not here to talk about the hellhole of capitalism we live in – that’s a post for another day.
Let’s start with the obvious. #BellLetsTalk is huge, it provides a huge platform for people to discuss mental health. Awesome. But unfortunately, it also provides a huge platform for big companies and organizations and institutions and, oh lord, politicians, to flex their hypocrisy muscle. Programs like #BellLetsTalk, or even programs like the poster campaign that I run, #MyDefinition, allow big companies and organizations and institutions the opportunity to say “Look! We put up a poster, we sent tweet, we are doing Everything in Our Power to Help” while not making any structural or financial contributions to actually improve the mental health conditions of their students/staff/citizens. The hypocrisy is nauseating, and I see it every year, companies and schools and organizations and politicians who emerge from the woodwork, send a tweet, pat themselves on the back, and go right back to not providing mental health services, stigmatizing mental illness, etc.
But hey, it’s not #BLT’s fault that their platform gets misused by big orgs every year. I get that. So let’s talk about the campaign itself. #BellLetsTalk is a huge platform. They have the opportunity, every year, to start conversations about all sorts of mental health issues. But the focus, every year, is predominantly on depression. Which, don’t get me wrong – depression is a hell of a disease. But there is a hierarchy of mental health issues – it sucks to say, but it’s true, and someone’s gotta just come out and say it. There’s a hierarchy in terms of how people perceive mental health issues, how they’re treated by doctors and counsellors, and in how comfortable people are even mentioning the words. The difference in how I was treated when I was diagnosed with depression versus when I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder is staggering. I was giving a presentation about mental health issues at a school in Alberta and a student said to me, “I’m all for destigmatizing things like self harm and depression and stuff, but what about ones where people are dangerous, like schizophrenia?” And fortunately, once that question was asked, I had the opportunity to educate 1100 high school students that people with schizophrenia or other psychotic disorders are in no way more dangerous than the general population. #BellLetsTalk has a much bigger platform than I do, and the opportunity to educate thousands, if not millions, of Canadians about a multitude of mental health issues. Or to talk about the mental health of people of colour, or the mental health of trans people, or the mental health of Indigenous people. They could use this platform to talk about how we are failing people living with mental health issues in so many ways. But they don’t.
Lastly, it’s right there in the name – Let’s Talk. I talk about mental health. I encourage other people to talk about mental health. Talking about mental health is important, and I get that – I get that big time. But talking can only bring us so far. Talking lets people realize they need help, so they can begin to access the help they need, whatever that may be. And so, so, SO often that help is not there. That second half of the puzzle isn’t there. But there’s no second half to #BellLetsTalk – there’s no #BellLetsAct, no #BellLetsCallOurPoliticians, no #BellLetsLookAtSocialIndicatorsOfHealth, no #BellLetsFundMoreMentalHealthServices, no #BellLetsInvestInPeerSupport. There’s just talking.
This should probably be the part where you’re looking at me going, “Okay, you bitter old hag. Then why are you clogging up my Twitter feed every #BellLetsTalk day? You’re the real hypocrite here.” And you might be right. I might be a huge hypocrite.
Because #BellLetsTalk has its flaws, but I am tweeting up a storm every year. And there is one simple reason.
And that reason is me. Not me now, but me eleven years ago. The young person who was always on a diet, secretly bingeing and purging, who felt that she couldn’t control her brain, who felt like she was crazy, who didn’t know the words “mental illness” or “mental health”. The young person who felt like she was alone in her experiences, who felt like she was one in a hundred million billion, when really she was one in five.
That twelve year old version of me is still out there. Maybe in a rural Alberta town like I was, or maybe in downtown Toronto. It doesn’t matter. They’re out there, and they’re probably on Facebook or Twitter. And if even one message gets through to them tomorrow that makes them feel less alone, then it’s worth it.
That’s why I do what I do. And that’s why I’ll be tweeting tomorrow.
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