Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH)<\/a>, Canada\u2019s largest mental health teaching hospital, and so, she decided to apply for help. She ended up staying there for a month, until her depression eased up.\u00a0<\/p>\nHaving no idea what it was like to be admitted, Turner said she\u2019d always wished to know what it was like to be a patient at CAMH. So, when she was admitted into the hospital for the second time in January, she thought it was her turn to do something to break mental health taboos in her community.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI probably should have gone to the hospital years ago, but I never got to see what a day in the life is like at the hospital. And it\u2019s the kind of content I would be curious to see if I was thinking about going to get inpatient support,\u201d she said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI wanted to help break the stigma of mental health hospitalizations. And it\u2019s not always what you see on TV\u2026It\u2019s not always someone you would suspect. Like, I can go to a social gathering or a party and I look pretty normal, but I go home, and then I\u2019m struggling with these issues. So, I just wanted to show that you don\u2019t have to be the most mentally ill person to still need support.\u201d<\/p>\n
After being admitted to CAMH again in January when her depression and suicidal inclinations came back, Turner documented the experience and shared a video on social media showing what it was like to be a mental health patient.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The video quickly gained attention online with over 400,000 views. There were also several comments from people who related to her experience or were on the lookout for support themselves.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThe messages I get, private ones and comments, really push me to keep going, because people do tell me that they got healthcare because of me, and that\u2019s like, wow. Like, I can have an impact on people, or if I can make someone feel like they aren\u2019t weird if they want to try and get an inpatient experience at CAMH,\u201d she said. \u201cI just want to influence people to show that you can get help and not be a pariah and not be judged.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Breaking mental health stigma<\/p>\n
Turner is not the only patient to open up about looking for mental health support. Another Toronto resident, Irene Aleobua, is also sharing her journey online, hoping to inspire her community to seek help.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI think it is so important that Black people talk about mental health openly, because when I went through my episode, there were so many people who didn\u2019t know what happened to me, but when I spoke about what happened to me, people were reaching out to me saying, \u2018Hey, Irene, this happened to me too. Hey, Irene, my brother is going through the same thing,\u2019\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was like an advocate in my community for mental health, because it happens to so many people. Unfortunately, people just don\u2019t know how to manage it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Aleobua has been diagnosed with bipolar disorder, a condition that makes a person experience extreme mood swings, fluctuating between periods of depression and elevated mood. She first looked for help in 2019 after she went through her first manic episode, a phase in which the person is continuously euphoric and happy or extremely irritable and aggressive.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI had no idea what happened to me, like, no clue. My family, my friends, everybody knew there was something wrong with me, but they had no idea what happened to me\u2026I got arrested, I went to the hospital. I went to a hospital in Canada. I went to hospital in South Africa, people like the doctors, were not explaining what was wrong with me,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Aleobua was first hospitalized at CAMH back then, and went back to the hospital about a month ago, when she said her loved ones alerted her the episodes had returned.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cCAMH saved my life. First of all, CAMH specialises in mental health. Right on top of that, I feel like healing is not done in isolation. Healing is done in community. They had a community. Not only did they have the facility and the care, but they also proposed you after you were discharged, like, there were groups, there were psychiatrists, there were programmes, there was just so much support,\u201d she explained.\u00a0<\/p>\n
With thousands of views and hundreds of comments, the video has granted Aleobua several messages of support from her community online, with many talking about their own journey seeking mental health.<\/p>\n
Having moved to Toronto from South Africa, Aleobua explained that mental health is often a taboo in her community. Her parents have even asked her to take the video down. But she hopes showing her journey will get more people in the community to talk freely about mental health and seek care.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI can\u2019t even put into words how we view mental health, and I\u2019m so grateful that I\u2019m in Canada, a country where I have the resources for mental health. We do talk about it, there\u2019s support, there\u2019s programs, there\u2019s doctors. It\u2019s just a completely different ecosystem that we have back home than we have here,\u201d she said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
CAMH offers more than doctors\u00a0<\/p>\n
For both Turner and Aleobua, CAMH represented a lifeline when they needed help.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Besides having the support from mental health-specialized professionals, they say the facilities are also equipped with daily activities that patients can partake in, as well as plenty of community support.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s not all about fun, but it\u2019s about making you feel better and also helping you create routines for when you do leave the hospital. If you\u2019re going to the gym, if you stop going to the gym, but then you start going at the hospital, hopefully you build on those routines once you leave the hospital,\u201d Turner said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
In addition, keeping a set routine also helps patients slow down and find balance.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThey basically want to slow you down, right? And I get it. But sometimes, when you are manic, like, you want to do 50 projects at the same time\u2026But they basically help you slow things down,\u201d Aleobua added.\u00a0<\/p>\n
CAMH told Now Toronto that having patients share their stories online can in fact help reduce stigma around mental health.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cIt takes courage to share a mental health journey publicly, and we recognize how powerful it can be when people with lived experience speak about their care. Stories like these can help reduce stigma and remind others that it\u2019s okay to reach out for help,\u201d a spokesperson said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cAt the same time, CAMH is dedicated to protecting the privacy and dignity of everyone who receives care. We are committed to ensuring that patients can focus on their treatment in a safe and respectful environment.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"What to know Toronto resident Emma Turner documented her stay at CAMH in a social media video that…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":507680,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[60],"tags":[230704,97,259,260],"class_list":["post-507679","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mental-health","tag-camh","tag-health","tag-mental-health","tag-mentalhealth"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/507679","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=507679"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/507679\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/507680"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=507679"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=507679"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=507679"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}