Calling Bullshit is not enough.
If any of you have seen a movie lately, you might have noticed the Call BS mental illness awareness commercials, or heard about it from somewhere else. I immediately loved and hated the idea at the same time.
The website aims to be a place where youth can go and discuss ways they have been failed by the mental health community-through lack of support, counsellors, misdiagnosis, misunderstanding and more. They can make public the feelings they've been dealing with in terms of lack of support, and in some way it's supposed to help the cause.
Personally, I can relate to this in 100 different ways. I have been misdiagnosed several times, I am currently between mental health professionals, I've tried every counsellor that my school offered, I didn't qualify for any more programs after I was dehospitalized, and the list goes on and on.
But, it's not enough for us to call bullshit. I've been calling bullshit this whole process to any mental health professional who will listen. I've called people, I've cried into the phone to directors of programs, and what little has been gained has been emotionally, and mentally taxing.
Maybe this will make the "bs" calling process easier for youth, but what about everyone else? What about for the people who are already excluded? What about the people who don't qualify as youth and are entering over-burdened mental health programs?
The site has a place for local organizing, but I don't know. Programs are still shitty and far between. There aren't enough counsellors, and groups to go around, and I worry a little. Having a mental illness is TAXING. It's emotionally stressful, and it's stressful to deal with a lack of proper treatment, your regular life and it's challenges, and ON TOP OF THAT dealing with educating others about it. You don't ask chemo patients to run a cancer relay, you don't ask post-surgery heart attack patients to stand up at heart and stroke foundation dinners moments after discharge.
A lot of mental illnesses are ongoing, and I don't doubt many people are dealing with acute cases and can't advocate on behalf of themselves. I know I can't always advocate on behalf of myself.
I am still working through this a little.