Covenant House Vancouver

One of Vancouver's most popular bloggers, Raul Pacheco, and his friend and follow blogger, Isabella Mori, organize "Mental Health Camp". Raul has written a great piece about mental health and how every one of us can suffer from a mental illness of some kind.

This year Mental Health Camp is focusing on breaking the silence of this pervasive and often debilitating condition. I am so pleased that Raul and Isabella take on this project; the more people learn about mental illness the better. I think of our young people and how many of them have serious mental illness concerns and how their lives could/would be better if a) they had been diagnosed earlier and b) their families understood the symptoms of their illness. Left untreated, the symptoms of bi-polar and schizophrenia, for example, are often "masked" with self-medicating -anything to make the "voices stop" or to numb the pain.

Mental illness is a mystery to a lot of people unless you've experienced it, or know someone who has. A few years ago, I had a bout of depression and at the time I was so worried about what "people would think" - would my employer think less of me? I sought treatment but I struggled with telling people, especially my parents: i was embarrassed and felt like a failure.

Do you have or have you had a mental illness?

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